Research

Published Research
Economics

When a Nudge Isn't Enough: Defaults and Saving Among Low-Income Tax Filers

Authors: Erin Bronchetti, David Huffman, Ellen Magenheim

Recent evidence suggests that the default options implicit in economic choices (e.g., 401(k) savings by white-collar workers) have extraordinarily large effects on decision-making. This study presents a field experiment that evaluates the effect of defaults on savings among a highly policy-relevant population: low-income tax filers.

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Published Research
Education

Pensions and K-12 Teacher Retirement: An Analysis Using National Teacher Data

Authors: Leora Friedberg, Sarah Turner

The retirement security landscape has changed drastically for most workers over the last thirty years – except for public school teachers and other state and local government employees. Many private-sector employers have stopped offering traditional retirement plans, while most state and local employees remain covered by defined benefit (DB) pension plans. 

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Published Research
Education

Labor Market Effects of Pensions and Implications for Teachers

Authors: Leora Friedberg

While the retirement security landscape has changed drastically for most workers over the last twenty years, traditional defined benefit (DB) pension plans remain the overwhelming norm for K–12 teachers. Because DB plans pay off fully with a fixed income after retirement only if a teacher stays in the profession for decades and yield little or nothing if a teacher leaves early, DB plans induce a strong, nonlinear relationship between years of tenure and benefit accrual.

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Published Research
Social Psychology

Relative deprivation and intergroup competition

Two experiments utilized a new experimental paradigm—the Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma— Maximizing Difference (IPD-MD) game—to study how relative deprivation at the group level affects intergroup competition. The IPD-MD game enables group members to make a costly contribution to either a within-group pool that benefits fellow ingroup members, or a between-group pool, which, in addition, harms outgroup members.

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Published Research

The Public Wants Information, Not Board Mandates, from Comparative Effectiveness Research

Authors: Eric M. Patashnik, Alan S. Gerber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling

We conducted two national surveys of public opinion about comparative effectiveness research and the integration of findings from the research into clinical practice. The first survey found broad support for using research results to provide information, but less support for using them to allocate government resources or mandate treatment decisions. In addition, the public is willing to consider the use of financial incentives to encourage patients to choose cheaper treatments, if research demonstrates that they work as well as more expensive ones. The second survey found that support for comparative effectiveness research dropped in response to general debates about its consequences but that arguments against the research could be effectively countered by specific, targeted rebuttals.

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