Selecting the Most Effective Nudge: Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment on Immunization

Abhijit Banerjee, Arun Chandrasekhar, Suresh Dalpath, Esther Duflo, John Floretta, Matthew Jackson, Harini Kannan, Francine N. Loza, Anirudh Sankar, Anna Schrimpf and Maheshwor Shrestha

No 28726, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Policymakers often choose a policy bundle that is a combination of different interventions in different dosages. We develop a new technique—treatment variant aggregation (TVA)—to select a policy from a large factorial design. TVA pools together policy variants that are not meaningfully different and prunes those deemed ineffective. This allows us to restrict attention to aggregated policy variants, consistently estimate their effects on the outcome, and estimate the best policy effect adjusting for the winner’s curse. We apply TVA to a large randomized controlled trial that tests interventions to stimulate demand for immunization in Haryana, India. The policies under consideration include reminders, incentives, and local ambassadors for community mobilization. Cross-randomizing these interventions, with different dosages or types of each intervention, yields 75 combinations. The policy with the largest impact (which combines incentives, ambassadors who are information hubs, and reminders) increases the number of immunizations by 44% relative to the status quo. The most cost-effective policy (information hubs, ambassadors, and SMS reminders but no incentives) increases the number of immunizations per dollar by 9.1% relative to status quo.

JEL-codes: C18 C93 D83 I15 O12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-net
Note: CH DAE DEV EH LS PE POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28726.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Selecting the Most Effective Nudge: Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment on Immunization (2021)
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:nbr:nberwo:28726

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28726

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().