Bottlenecks for Evidence Adoption

Stefano DellaVigna, Woojin Kim and Elizabeth Linos

Journal of Political Economy, 2024, vol. 132, issue 8, 2748 - 2789

Abstract: Governments increasingly use randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to test innovations, yet we know little about how they incorporate results into policymaking. We study 30 US cities that ran 73 RCTs with a national nudge unit. Cities adopt a nudge treatment into their communications in 27% of the cases. We find that the strength of the evidence and key city features do not strongly predict adoption; instead, the largest predictor is whether the RCT was implemented using preexisting communication, as opposed to new communication. We identify organizational inertia as a leading explanation: changes to preexisting infrastructure are more naturally folded into subsequent processes.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/729447 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/729447 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: Bottlenecks for Evidence Adoption (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/729447

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().