To date, field experiments on campaign tactics have focused overwhelmingly on mobilization and voter turnout, with far more limited attention to persuasion and vote choice. In this paper, we analyze a field experiment with 56,000 Wisconsin voters designed to measure the persuasive effects of canvassing, phone calls, and mailings during the 2008 presidential election. Focusing on the canvassing ...

Abstract There is considerable evidence that males are more prone to take risks than females. This difference has implications for rates of promotion in hierarchies where promotion is based on random signals of ability. I explore the promotion consequences of three types of performance standards: gender-blind standards, standards designed to promote agents of equal ability on average, and stand...

Education systems in low income countries are routinely portrayed as experiencing a learning crisis and as facing strong political economy challenges that impede efforts aimed at improving quality. This paper aims to improve the understanding of the confluence of political, bureaucratic and societal challenges faced by public school actors in their quest to reform and compete in the context of ...

Technological innovation is frequently a means for reducing uncertainty in organizational activities. At the same time, uncertainty also arises about the potential consequences of introducing the innovation. Innovation involving complex new information systems (IS) often carries uncertainty about consequences, particularly when goals or expectations are unclear. Previous research has reinforced...

How do people solve the explore-exploit trade-off in a changing environment? In this paper we present experimental evidence in an “observe or bet” task, comparing human behavior in a changing environment to their behavior in an unchanging one. We present a Bayesian analysis of the observe or bet task and show that human judgments are consistent with that analysis. However, we find that people’s...