Strengthening Fragile States: Evidence from Mobile Salary Payments in Afghanistan Joshua E. Blumenstock, Michael Callen, Anastasiia Faikina, Stefano Fiorin, and Tarek Ghani Abstract Building state capacity is uniquely challenging in fragile states. We report results from a randomized evaluation of a major Afghan government initiative to increase capacity by modernizing its payroll. The reform, […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 518, July 2017
Why Do Defaults Affect Behavior? Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan Joshua Blumenstock, Michael Callen, Tarek Ghani Abstract We report on an experiment examining why default options impact behavior. Working with one of the largest private firms in Afghanistan, we randomly assigned each of 949 employees to different variants of a new default savings account. Employees assigned […]