SPP Faculty Research Seminar

We designed a three month digital financial education program that was delivered via mobile phone and email among college students. We evaluated the impact of our program on financial behavior using a randomized controlled trial (RCT) approach with a waitlist control group. We focused on the impact of our intervention on financial behavior rather than on financial knowledge given that the material we used was designed to provide practical tips to improve money management skills for college students. We study the impact of our program across all participants, and also across gender groups.

Why most got China and Russia wrong  ---- the neglect of ideology and regime analysis in international relations theory and practice.

Behavior may transmit negatively between different social institutions among school aged children, using a field experiment in Bangladesh. We randomly assign students to watch hand washing videos at school and find that students induced to wash more at school wash less at home, and students who are induced to wash more at home wash less at school, cautioning us against studying the effect of a policy intervention at only the intervention site.

Minority entrepreneurs in the U.S. often face greater constraints in securing funding from local banks. An econometric investigation shows that the availability of high-speed internet access, which allows access to online lending, crowdfunding, and other fintech, lowers this barrier for all entrepreneurs but more so for those in areas with large minority populations.

Even though they lacked full political power and civil rights, African American, Jewish, Chinese, and Japanese citizens used the Tocquevillian levers of civil society to influence the American war debate during the 1930s and early 1940s.  It is not an overstatement to say they had a major impact on Washington's deliberations about entering the war.