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Research

Cash transfer programs:

“The Causal Effects of Unconditional Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence from Two U.S. States”, with Alex Bartik, David Broockman, Sarah Miller, and Elizabeth Rhodes

This is a large project in the U.S. that will test the impact of receiving $1,000/month, unconditionally, for 3 years. Outcomes covered (some of these may merge but they are currently envisaged as separate papers):

  • Employment, work quality, and job search
  • Time use
  • Income, expenditures, and financial health
  • Mental and physical health outcomes
  • Cognitive outcomes
  • Material wellbeing
  • Subjective, psychological, and social wellbeing
  • Political and social attitudes
  • Children’s outcomes
  • Intrahousehold outcomes and intimate partner violence
  • Migration and housing outcomes
  • Crime

“The Causal Effects of Unconditional Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence from a Large U.S. City”, with Alex Bartik, Sarah Miller, and Elizabeth Rhodes

“The Causal Effects of Unconditional Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence from a U.S. County”, with Nour Abdul-Razzak, Alex Bartik, Sarah Miller, and Elizabeth Rhodes

“The Unclaimed Property Puzzle: Billion Dollar Bills Lying on the Sidewalk”


Improving evidence-based decision-making:

1. Forecasting:

Social Science Prediction Platform website

Golden, M., Scacco, A, Zhai, H., Slough, T., Humphreys, M., Vivalt, E., Diaz-Cayeros, A., Dionne, K.Y., KC, S., Nazrullaeva, E., et al. (2023). “Gathering, Evaluating, and Aggregating Social Scientific Models of COVID-19 Mortality”

DellaVigna, S., Otis, N. and Vivalt, E. (2020). “Forecasting the Results of Experiments: Piloting an Elicitation Strategy”, AEA Papers and Proceedings, 110(5): 75-79.

DellaVigna, S., Pope, D. and Vivalt, E. (2019). “Predict Science to Improve Science”, Science, 366(6464): 428-429.

Vivalt, E. (2020). “Using Priors in Experimental Design: How Much Are We Leaving on the Table?” in Bédécarrats F., I. Guérin, and F. Roubaud, eds., Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development: The Gold Standard Revisited (pp. 293-303). London: Oxford University Press.

Media coverage of research on this theme:

Popular articles, podcasts, blog posts and talks:


2. Evidence-to-policy pipeline:

Vivalt, E. and Coville, A. (2023). “How Do Policymakers Update Their Beliefs?”, Journal of Development Economics, 165: 103121.

Vivalt, E., Coville, A. and KC, S. (2023). “Local Knowledge, Formal Evidence, and Policy Decisions”

Vivalt, E., Coville, A. and KC, S. (2023). “Seeking Evidence: Which Studies Do Policymakers Prefer?”

Vivalt, E. and Coville, A. (2021). “Policymakers Consistently Overestimate Program Impacts”


3. Meta-research:

Vivalt, E. (2020). “How Much Can We Generalize from Impact Evaluations?”, Journal of the European Economics Association, 18(6): 3045–3089. Online Appendices, Presentation, Teaching Slides

Vivalt, E. (2019). “Specification Searching and Significance Inflation Across Time, Methods and Disciplines”, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 81(4): 797–816.

Vivalt, E. (2015). “Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in Impact Evaluation”, American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 105(5): 467–470.

AidGrade’s site

Media coverage of research on this theme:

Popular articles, podcasts, blog posts and talks:


Moral values and norms:

Huet-Vaughn, E., Pham, M., Tasoff, J., and Vivalt, E. “The Shape of Moral Values”

Chow, V. and Vivalt, E. (2022). “Challenges in Changing Social Norms: Evidence from Interventions Targeting Child Marriage in Ethiopia.” Journal of African Economies, 31(3): 183-210.


Other papers