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.

2021
Moberg, S. K.

A randomised controlled trial has been performed in which 580 randomly selected pupils (aged 14-15) have been randomly assigned to participate in online programmes that focus either on entrepreneurship or on environmental issues. . The short-term results show that the programme focusing on entrepreneurship had a significantly positive influence on the participants’ entrepreneurial intentions, venture creation self-efficacy, entrepreneurial attitudes and perceived knowledge about entrepreneurship

2021
Anderson-Macdonald, S., Kankanhalli, S., Iacovone, L., Narayanan, S.

This paper studies the impact of business modernization on the sales performance of traditional retailers. We define modernization as adopting tangible structures and business practices of organized retail chains (for example, exterior signage with store name and logo, or a database to record product-level information). To address our research question, we implement a randomized field experiment in Mexico City with 1148 traditional retail firms.

2021
Moldon, L., Strohmaier, M., Wachs, J.

We examine how the behavior of software developers changes in response to removing gamification elements from GitHub, an online platform for collaborative programming and software development. We find that the unannounced removal of daily activity streak counters from the user interface (from user profile pages) was followed by significant changes in behavior. Long-running streaks of activity were abandoned and became less common. Weekend activity decreased and days in which developers made a single contribution became less common.

2021
Bryan, G., Karlan, D., Osman A.

We experimentally study the impact of substantially larger enterprise loans, in collaboration with an Egyptian lender. Larger loans generate small average impacts, but machine learning using psychometric data reveals dramatic heterogeneity. Top-performers (i.e., those with the highest predicted treatment effects) substantially increase profits, whereas profits for poor-performers drop. The magnitude of this difference implies that an individual lender’s credit allocation choices matter for aggregate income.

2021
Anderson S., Mckenzie D.

This study asks why more small firms in developing countries do not use the market for professional business services like accounting, marketing, and human resource specialists and asks how this could be altered.

2021
McKenzie, D., Mohpal, A., Yang D.

This randomised experiment tested the impact of exogenously inducing higher financial aspirations among poor entrepreneurs.

2021
Barsoum, G., Crépon, B., Gardiner, D., Michel, B., Parienté, W.

This trial measures the impact of an edutainment program specifically designed to promote entrepreneurship among young adult viewers in Egypt.

2021
Cusolito, A.P., McKenzie, D.

This experiment tests the impact of a program with the main goal of helping firms to attract new customers, expand markets, adapt their business model, and bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic by boosting demand for their products.

2021
Calder-Wang, S., Gompers, P., Huang, K.

This paper studies the role of diversity and performance in the entrepreneurial teams.

2021
Janes, L., Koelle, M., Quinn, S.

Do capital grants improve microenterprise productivity? We use the lens of a production function to re-examine two previous randomised controlled trials that allocated capital to microenterprises. We find that productivity is higher for treated firms, and accounts for about 20-30 percent of the revenue effects of capital grants. Although long-run estimates are noisy, point estimates indicate that these productivity effects are sustained six years after the grants.

2021
Alan, S., Corekcioglu, G., Sutter, M.

This project evaluated the impact of a program aiming to improve the workplace climate in corporations.

2021
Camuffo, A., Gambardella, A., Messinese, D., Novelli, E., Paolucci, E., Spina, C.

The model shows that managers and entrepreneurs make better decisions under uncertainty if they adopt a scientific approach in which they formulate and test theories.

2021
Chioda, L., Contreras-Loya, D., Gertler, P., Carney, D.

This paper studies the medium-term impacts of the Skills for Effective Entrepreneurship Development (SEED) program, an innovative in-residence 3-week mini-MBA program for high school students modeled after western business school curricula and adapted to the Ugandan context.

2020
Kim, H.

This paper asks to what extent firms are aware of readily available information on key competitor decisions, and how this information impacts firms’ strategic choices.

2020
Dell'Acqua, F., Kogut, B., Perkowski, P.

This article studies the effects of the adoption of artificial intelligence on teams and their performance and coordination in a laboratory experiment. We posit that automation decreases organizational performance, interferes with team member coordination, and leads to behavioral changes in human co-workers. We randomize the introduction of automated players and new hires into "laboratory firms" (Weber and Camerer, 2003) who must coordinate in teams playing a game on the Nintendo Switch console.

2020
Boudreau, K., Kaushik, N.

This paper reports on a large platform-based field experiment in which 97,696 U.S. university-educated individuals were given the opportunity to join a tech-related product development activity.

2020
Hasan, S., Koning, R.

This paper evaluates the effect of joint tasks on the creation of network ties with data from a novel field experiment with 112 aspiring entrepreneurs.

2020
Bloom, N., Mahajan, A., McKenzie, D., Roberts, J.

Indian weaving firms are visited again nine years after a randomized experiment that changed their management practices.

2020
Kim, H., Spina, C.

In this study, we empirically examine the effect of sharing information with close or distant competitors as part of an incubation program. There is recent evidence of substantial heterogeneity in acceleration programs, with qualitative research highlighting that the main benefit for participants to these programs is the increased exposure to information and the feedback they obtain. Such exposure helps balance the bounded rationality of founders.

2020
Gertler, P., Higgins, S., Malmendier, U., Ojeda, W.

This paper tests the role of three behavioral biases: present bias, limited memory, and overconfidence about memory.

2020
Bapna, S., Ganco, M.

While prior research shows a significant gender gap in traditional equity financing, with mostly male investors who prefer male founders, emerging evidence indicates that gender gaps in funding may not translate to rewards-based crowdfunding, where female entrepreneurs may have an advantage, particularly with female investors. We seek to examine founder gender preferences in the context of equity crowdfunding, which represents a direct counterpart to traditional equity financing and which is a “higher-stakes” context than rewards-based crowdfunding.

2020
Acimovic, J., Balasubramanian, K., Drake, D., Parker, C.

This trial investigates the best way to help agents perform better, as firms providing products and services to low income Base of the Pyramid (BOP) customers are increasingly utilizing independent contractor agents rather than employees in their distribution models.

2020
Jin, Y., Sun, Z.

Expansion of e-commerce presents new opportunities for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to enter broader market at lower costs, but the SMEs face barriers to growth after entry. To facilitate new entrants to overcome these barriers, this paper explores implementing a training program as a randomized controlled experiment with over two million new sellers on a large e-commerce platform.

2020
Agarwal, R., Choudhury, P., Starr, E.

The use of machine learning (ML) for productivity in the knowledge economy requires considerations of important biases that may arise from ML predictions. We define a new source of bias related to incompleteness in real time inputs, which may result from strategic behavior by agents. We theorize that domain expertise of users can complement ML by mitigating this bias. Our observational and experimental analyses in the patent examination context support this conjecture.

2020
Ho, D.E., Larrimore Ouellette, L.

Many have advocated for the expansion of peer review to improve scientific judgments in law and public policy. One such test case is the patent examination process, with numerous commentators arguing that scientific peer review can solve informational deficits in patent determinations. We present results from a novel randomized field experiment, carried out over the course of three years, in which 336 prominent scientific experts agreed to provide input on U.S. patent applications. Their input was edited for compliance with submission requirements and submitted to the U.S.

2020
Bechthold, L. A., Rosendahl Huber, L.

This study builds on the assumption that the common experiential design of entrepreneurship education stimulates entrepreneurial learning via social interaction with peers. The analysis focuses on gendered peer effects at the pre-nascent stage of the entrepreneurial process and on the role of team emotional intelligence in the context of entrepreneurship education.

2020
Graff Zivin, J., Lyons, E.

This paper compares how two common incentive schemes affect innovative performance in a field experiment run in partnership with a large life sciences company.

2020
Ganguli, I., Gaule, P., Vuletić Čugalj, D.

This trial investigates whether excessively optimistic beliefs may play a role in the persistent demand for doctoral and post-doctoral training in science.

2020
Ganguli, I., Gaule, P., Guinan, E., Lakhani, K., Lane, J.

We investigate how knowledge similarity between two individuals is systematically related to the likelihood that a serendipitous encounter results in knowledge production. We conduct a field experiment at a medical research symposium, where we exogenously varied opportunities for face-to-face encounters among 15,817 scientist-pairs. Our data include direct observations of interaction patterns collected using sociometric badges, and detailed, longitudinal data of the scientists' postsymposium publication records over 6 years.

2020
Van den Berg, G.J., Dauth, C., Homrighausen, P., Stephan, G.

Using survey and register data, this experiment estimates the effects of the information treatment brochure on awareness of WeGebAU, on take-up of WeGebAU and other training, and on subsequent employment.

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