IGL Trials Database

IGL curates a database with randomised controlled trials in the field of innovation, entrepreneurship and growth. Browse our list of topics, see it as a map, or use the search function below.

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Access to Finance
Business Training
Economic Incentives
Encouraging Entrepreneurship
Management Practices
Nudges
Promoting Innovation
Rural Development
Social Inclusion
Technology Adoption
University-Business Collaboration
2011
Performance Pay and Multi-dimensional Sorting: Productivity, Preferences and Gender
Dohmen, T., Armin, F.

In this lab experiment intended to recreate sorting into jobs and productivity in those jobs within the labour market, there is stong evidence of multidimensional sorting, including gender, risk attitudes, and productivity. Therefore, firms should consider both effort effects and the self-selection of different types of workers.

2011
Training or Technical Assistance? A Field Experiment to Learn What Works to Increase Managerial Capital for Female Entrepreneurs
Valdivia, M.

In the context urban Sri Lanka the challenge in getting female-owned, subsistence-level microenterprises to grow may lie outside the realm of capital and skills. Results of the training and capital access intervention are somewhat more encouraging in terms of helping women who are outside the labour force to start enterprises more quickly.

2009
Social Connections and Incentives in the Workplace: Evidence from Personnel Data
Bandiera, O., Barankay, I., Rasul, I.

In the context of a fruit producer in the UK, social connections increase productivity of connected workers, but their effect on the allocation of managerial effort hinders firm productivity under fixed wages. Thus managerial behaviour is shaped by both social connections with subordinates and monetary incentives. In this setting, it is in the firm's best interest to foster social ties between management and workers, but to introduce monetary incentives to achieve an efficient interplay between social relationships and incentives.

2007
Incentives for Managers and Inequality among Workers: Evidence from a Firm-Level Experiment
Bandiera, O., Barankay, I., and Rasul, I.

In the context of a fruit producer in the UK, the introduction of managerial incentives provides evidence of positive effects on worker productivity. In this context, when managers' pay is linked to the firm's performance, their interests become more aligned with those of the firm, which ultimately translates into stronger alignment of incentives of the workers they manage since the managers can target their efforts to specific workers. This also sheds some light on how managerial incentives determine earnings inequality among workers.

2002
Monitoring, Motivation, and Management: The Determinants of Opportunistic Behavior in a Field Experiment
Nagin, D., Rebitzer, J., Sanders, S., Taylor, L.

In the context of a call centre, behavioural heterogeneity observed through employees shirking when reduced monitoring is introduced has important implications for the design and management of reward systems. Management needs to balance monitoring strategies needed to regulate opportunistic employees with strategies needed to sustain the motivation of the substantial fraction of employees disinclined to shirk.

1999
Overconfidence and Excess Entry: An Experimental Approach
Camerer, C. and Lovallo, D.

In the context of a lab experiment intended to mimick market entry decisions, overconfidence leads to the neglect of the quality of competition. When post-entry payoffs are based on individual abilities, individuals tend to overestimate their chances of relative success and enter more frequently. Surprisingly, overconfidence is even stronger when individuals' self-select into the experimental sessions knowing their success will depend partly on their skill.

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