Cash transfer programs:
Working papers:
Vivalt, E., Rhodes, E., Bartik, A., Broockman, D., Krause, P., and Miller, S. (2024). “The Employment Effects of a Guaranteed Income: Experimental Evidence from Two U.S. States”, revise and resubmit at the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Miller, S., Rhodes, E., Bartik, A., Broockman, D., Krause, P., and Vivalt, E. (2024). “Does Income Affect Health? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial of a Guaranteed Income”, revise and resubmit at the American Economic Review.
Bartik, A., Rhodes, E., Broockman, D., Krause, P., Miller, S., and Vivalt, E. (2024). “The Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers on Consumption and Household Balance Sheets: Experimental Evidence from Two US States”
Broockman, D., Rhodes, E., Bartik, A., Dotson, K., Krause, P., Miller, S., and Vivalt, E. (2024). “The Causal Effects of Income on Political Attitudes and Behavior: A Randomized Field Experiment”
The experiment in the papers above has been covered by over 100 original English-language pieces, including:
- Financial Times: “Universal basic income: the bad idea that never quite dies”
- Forbes: “New Study Finds That A Guaranteed Income Does Not Guarantee Benefits”
- New York Times: “The Report Card on Guaranteed Income Is Still Incomplete”
- Newsweek: “Americans Were Given An Extra $1,000 a Month For Free. Here’s What Happened”
- NPR: “As new tech threatens jobs, Silicon Valley promotes no-strings cash aid”
- Scientific American: “Basic Income Gives Money without Strings. Here’s How People Spend It”
- USA Today: “How much is $1,000 a month worth? New study explores impact of basic income”
- Vox: “Artificial intelligence isn’t a good argument for basic income”
- Washington Post: “Cash alone proves inadequate to solve the problems of the poor”
- Wired: “Here’s What Happens When You Give People Free Money”
Vivalt, E. (2024). “The Unclaimed Property Puzzle: Billion Dollar Bills Lying on the Sidewalk”
In progress:
“The Causal Effects of Unconditional Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence from a Large U.S. City”, with Nour Abdul-Razzak, 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
Improving evidence-based decision-making:
1. Evidence-to-policy pipeline:
Vivalt, E., Coville, A. and KC, S. (2025). “Local Knowledge, Formal Evidence, and Policy Decisions”, Journal of Development Economics, 174: 103425.
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). “Seeking Evidence: Which Studies Do Policymakers Prefer?”
Vivalt, E. and Coville, A. (2021). “Policymakers Consistently Overestimate Program Impacts”
Media coverage of research on this theme:
- VoxDev: “How do policymakers interpret different types of evidence?”
- Social Science Research Council (SSRC) College and University Fund Lecture Series: “The Evidence-to-Policy Pipeline”
2. 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:
- Ars Technica: “‘I Could’ve Told You That’ Might Have a Useful Role to Play in Science”
- Science Daily: “Were those experiment results really so predictable? These researchers aim to find out”
- Behavioral Scientist: “Solving the Problem of ‘Obviousness’ with Prediction Platforms”
Popular articles, podcasts, blog posts and talks:
- Hear This Idea: “Evidence-Based Policy and Forecasting Social Science”
- Toronto Data Workshop: Keynote presentation
- The Conversation: “Predicting Research Results Can Mean Better Science and Better Advice”
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.
Media coverage of research on this theme:
- Financial Times: “How economists could make themselves more useful”
- The Atlantic: “Make Science More Reliable, Win Cash Prizes”
- Vox: “Don’t teach a man to fish. Just give him the goddamn fish”
- The Washington Post: “The Wonkblog Guide to Holiday Giving”
- Mother Jones: “Most Studies of Social Interventions Are Pretty Worthless”
- Lant Pritchett’s mini-series for the Center for Global Development: “Is Your Impact Evaluation Asking Questions That Matter? A Four Part Smell Test”
- Marginal Revolution: “Everyone in development economics should read this paper”
- 3ie’s blog: “Trends in impact evaluation: Did we ever learn?”
Popular articles, podcasts, blog posts and talks:
- Harvard Business Review: “How to Be a Smart Consumer of Social Science Research”
- 80,000 Hours podcast: “Dr Eva Vivalt’s research suggests social science findings don’t generalize. So evidence-based development – what is it good for?”
- Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) Conference 2018, Closing plenary: “Limits to evidence-based interventions for development”
- Effective Altruism Global: Global Poverty talk
- The Inter-American Development Bank’s blog: “How much do impact evaluations (really) help policymaking?”
- The NYU Development Research Institute’s blog: “5 ways to improve your impact evaluation”
- The World Bank’s Development Impact blog: “What do 600 papers on 20 types of interventions tell us about how much impact evaluations generalize?” and “What isn’t reported in impact evaluations?”
Moral values and norms:
Huet-Vaughn, E., Pham, M., Tasoff, J., and Vivalt, E. (2024). “Moral Preferences and the Marketplace of Ideas”
Freitas-Groff, Z., Macdonald, B., and Vivalt, E. (2024). “The Impact of New Products on Ethical Beliefs”, revise and resubmit at the European Economic Review.
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.