[Using a unique panel data set from a U.K. credit card company, we analyze the interest rate sensitivity of subprime credit card borrowers. In addition to all individual transactions and loan terms, we have access to details of a randomized interest rate experiment conducted by the lender on existing (inframarginal) loans. For the whole sample, we estimate a statistically significant £3.4 reduction in monthly credit demand in response to a five percentage point increase in interest rates. This aggregate response is small, but it masks very interesting heterogeneity in the sample. We find that only low-risk borrowers who fully utilize their credit cards lower their credit demand significantly when faced with an increase in interest rates. We also document that a five percentage point increase in interest rates generates significant additional revenue for the lender without inducing delinquency over a short horizon.]

Using a unique panel data set from a U.K. credit card company, we analyze the interest rate sensitivity of subprime credit card borrowers. In addition to all individual transactions and loan terms, we have access to details of a randomized interest rate experiment conducted by the lender on existing (inframarginal) loans. For the whole sample, we estimate a statistically significant £3.4 reduction in monthly credit demand in response to a five percentage point increase in interest rates. This aggregate response is small, but it masks very interesting heterogeneity in the sample. We find that only low-risk borrowers who fully utilize their credit cards lower their credit demand significantly when faced with an increase in interest rates. We also document that a five percentage point increase in interest rates generates significant additional revenue for the lender without inducing delinquency over a short horizon.

We test the effectiveness of a behavioral program grounded in the idea that status granting and self-persuasion might yield a robust behavioral change in disadvantaged adolescents. We enlist socially connected senior middle school students with high emotional intelligence as “student-teachers” and entrust them with delivering a curriculum to their junior peers. The program empowers student-teachers, leading them to improve their social environment. It reduces disciplinary incidents and antisocial behavior among student-teachers and their friendship networks. The intervention significantly enhances the likelihood of admission to selective high schools for student-teachers, offering a cost-effective way to help disadvantaged adolescents escape neighborhood disadvantages. (JEL H52, I21, I24, I28, J13, O15)

We evaluate the impact of a randomized educational intervention on children’s intertemporal choices. The intervention aims to improve the ability to imagine future selves and encourages forward-looking behavior using a structured curriculum delivered by children’s own trained teachers. We find that treated students make more patient intertemporal decisions in incentivized experimental tasks. The results persist almost 3 years after the intervention, replicate well in a different sample, and are robust across different experimental elicitation methods. The effects also extend beyond experimental outcomes: we find that treated students are significantly less likely to receive a low “behavior grade.”

We present a novel structural estimation procedure for models of intertemporal allocation. This is based on modelling expectations errors directly; we refer to it as synthetic residual estimation (SRE). The flexibility of SRE allows us to account for measurement error in consumption and for heterogeneity in intertemporal allocation parameters. An investigation of the small sample properties of the SRE estimator indicates that it dominates generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation of both exact and approximate Euler equations in the case when we have short panels and noisy consumption data. We apply SRE to two panels drawn from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and estimate the joint distribution of the discount factor and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. We reject strongly homogeneity of the discount factor and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. We find that, on average, the more educated are more patient and less willing to substitute intertemporally than the less educated. Within education strata, patience and willingness to substitute are positively correlated.

Abstract We evaluate the effect of an educational program that aims to build social cohesion in ethnically mixed schools by developing perspective-taking ability in children. The program is implemented in Turkish elementary schools affected by a large influx of Syrian refugee children. We measure a comprehensive set of outcomes that characterize a cohesive school environment, including peer violence incidents, the prevalence of interethnic social ties, and prosocial behavior. Using randomized variation in program implementation, we find that the program significantly lowers peer violence and victimization on school grounds. The program also reduces the likelihood of social exclusion and increases interethnic social ties in the classroom. We find that the program significantly improves prosocial behavior, measured by incentivized tasks: treated students exhibit significantly higher trust, reciprocity, and altruism toward each other as well as toward anonymous out-school peers. We show that this enhanced prosociality is welfare improving from the ex post payoff perspective. We investigate multiple channels that could explain the results, including ethnic bias, impulsivity, empathetic concern, emotional intelligence, behavioral norms, and perspective taking. Children’s increased effort to take others’ perspectives emerges as the most robust mechanism to explain our results.

We evaluate a pedagogical intervention aimed at improving learning in elementary school children by fostering their curiosity. We test the effectiveness of the pedagogy using achievement scores and a novel measure of curiosity. The latter involves creating a sense of information deprivation and quantifying the urge to acquire information and retention ability. The intervention increases curiosity, knowledge retention, and science test scores, with the effects persisting into middle school years. It also leads to more information sharing and peer learning in the classroom. The evidence can help design better pedagogical tools to increase pupil engagement and the quality of learning. (JEL D83, I21, I26, J13, O15)

Abstract We evaluate the impact of a training program aimed at improving the relational atmosphere in the workplace. The program encourages prosocial behavior and the use of professional language, focusing primarily on leaders’ behavior and leader-subordinate interactions. We implement this program using a clustered randomized design involving over 3,000 headquarters employees of 20 large corporations in Turkey. We evaluate the program with respect to employee separation, pro- and antisocial behavior, the prevalence of support networks, and perceived workplace climate. We find that treated firms have a lower likelihood of employee separation at the leadership level, fewer employees lacking professional and personal help, and denser, less segregated support networks. We also find that employees in treated corporations are less inclined to engage in toxic competition, exhibit higher reciprocity toward each other, and report higher workplace satisfaction and a more collegial environment. The program’s success in improving leader-subordinate relationships emerges as a likely mechanism to explain these results. Treated subordinates report higher professionalism and empathy in their leaders and are more likely to consider their leaders as professional support providers.

Abstract We show that grit, a skill that has been shown to be highly predictive of achievement, is malleable in childhood and can be fostered in the classroom environment. We evaluate a randomized educational intervention implemented in two independent elementary school samples. Outcomes are measured via a novel incentivized real-effort task and performance in standardized tests. We find that treated students are more likely to exert effort to accumulate task-specific ability and hence more likely to succeed. In a follow up 2.5 years after the intervention, we estimate an effect of about 0.2 standard deviations on a standardized math test.

We study the effect of elementary school teachers' beliefs about gender roles on student achievement. We exploit a natural experiment where teachers are prevented from self-selecting into schools, and, conditional on school, students are allocated to teachers randomly. We show that girls who are taught for longer than a year by teachers with traditional gender views have lower performance in objective math and verbal tests, and this effect is amplified with longer exposure to the same teacher. We find no effect on boys. We show that the effect is partly mediated by teachers' transmitting traditional beliefs to girls.