Institution profile

Yale University

Yale researchers — including Green & Gerber's foundational work on voter mobilization and Karlan's microfinance evaluations — have led trials across politics, finance, and development.

www.yale.edu ↗

Experiments

2000–2020

Year span

6 / 6

Positive findings

Null findings

Top policy areas

Voter Engagement · 3
Public Health · 1
Energy & Environment · 1
Financial Services · 1

Experiments from Yale University

Positive
Community-Level Mask Promotion — COVID-19
Yale / Stanford research partnership with Bangladeshi NGOs · Bangladesh · 2020 · Public Health
Effect: Mask-wearing increased from 13% to 42% in treatment villages; symptomatic COVID-19 reduced by ~11%; symptomatic seroprevalence reduced by ~9% (larger effects for surgical vs. cloth masks)
Positive
Solar Panel Adoption Peer Effects
Yale University / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory · Connecticut, United States · 2014 · Energy & Environment
Effect: Each additional installation within 0.5 miles raises probability of neighbor adoption by 0.78 percentage points; effect concentrated within 0.5 miles and decays with distance
Positive
Text Message Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns
Stanford / Yale / IPA (Malhotra, Michelson, Rogers, Valenzuela and others) · California and multiple US states · 2011 · Voter Engagement
Effect: Average effect: 0.3–0.9 percentage points across studies; effects are reliable but small per message; at scale (statewide campaigns reaching millions), effects translate to tens of thousands of additional votes
Positive
Michigan Social Pressure Voting Mailer
University of Michigan / Yale University · Michigan, USA · 2006 · Voter Engagement
Effect: Social pressure arm: +8.1 percentage points vs. control; self-disclosure: +4.9 pp; Hawthorne: +2.5 pp; civic duty: +1.8 pp. Social pressure arm produced the largest GOTV effect ever recorded in a randomized study at that time.
Positive
SEED Commitment Savings Account — Philippines
Yale University / IPA (Ashraf, Karlan, Yin) · Mindanao, Philippines · 2004 · Financial Services
Effect: 28% of those offered SEED accounts opened one; savings balances increased by 82 pesos per week (approximately 81% of control mean) for account openers; no significant spillover to those offered but who declined
Positive
Door-to-Door GOTV Canvassing — New Haven
Yale University (Green & Gerber) · New Haven, CT, USA · 2000 · Voter Engagement
Effect: Personal canvassing: +6 to +9 pp; direct mail: +0 to +1 pp (not significant); phone calls: +3 pp. Effect of canvassing has been replicated in 50+ subsequent studies with consistent range of 5–10 pp.