It's Good to Be First: Order Bias in Reading and Citing NBER Working Papers

When choices are made from ordered lists, individuals can exhibit biases toward selecting certain options as a result of the ordering. We examine this phenomenon in the context of consumer response to the ordering of economics papers in an e-mail announcement issued by the NBER. We show that despite the effectively random list placement, papers listed first each week are about 30% more likely to be viewed, downloaded, and subsequently cited. We suggest that a model of “skimming” behavior, where individuals focus on the first few papers in the list due to time constraints, would be most consistent with our findings

Sequential order as an extraneous factor in editorial decision

Academic journal editors reject a significant portion of first submissions without sending them out for peer review. This decision, desk rejection, is made to reduce the workload on associate editors and referees, to give the submitting author a head start on revision or pursuit of an alternative venue, as well as to achieve quicker turnaround time for the journal. Desk rejection is a judgement based on the manuscript's perceived quality, impact and fit with the journal's scope. Could extraneous factors, which are unrelated to the content of a manuscript, affect the editorial decision? This paper examines whether the sequential order in which manuscripts are submitted to a large academic journal affects the editorial decision. Becoming the first submission on the editor's list of manuscripts to review increases the probability of a desk rejection by up to 7% without any effect on the likelihood of a rejection after peer review

User-centered counseling and male involvement in contraceptive decision making: protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: To achieve informed choice within the framework of reproductive autonomy, family planning programs have begun to adopt user-centered approaches to service provision, which highlight the individual client as the focal point of interaction and key decision maker. However, little is known about how user-centered approaches to family planning, particularly family planning counseling, shape contraceptive preferences and choices. OBJECTIVE: We conducted a multiarmed randomized controlled trial to identify the causal impact of user-centered approaches to family planning counseling on women's contraceptive decision making in urban Malawi. This study aims to determine how a tailored, preference-driven approach to family planning counseling and the involvement of male partners during the counseling process may contribute to shaping women's contraceptive preferences and choices. METHODS: Married women aged 18-35 years were recruited and randomly assigned to 1 of the 3 intervention arms or a control arm characterized by the following two interventions: an intervention arm in which women were encouraged to invite their husbands to family planning counseling (husband invitation arm) and an intervention arm in which women received targeted, tailored counseling on up to five contraceptive methods (as opposed to up to 13 contraceptive methods) that reflected women's stated preferences for contraceptive methods. Women were randomized into a control arm, T0 (no husband invitation, standard counseling); T1 (husband invitation, standard counseling); T2 (no husband invitation, targeted counseling); and T3 (husband invitation, targeted counseling). Following counseling, all women received a package of family planning services, which included free transportation to a local family planning clinic and financial reimbursement for family planning services. Follow-up surveys were conducted with women 1 month after counseling. RESULTS: A total of 785 women completed the baseline survey, and 782 eligible respondents were randomized to 1 of the 3 intervention groups or the control group (T1, n=223; T2, n=225; T3, n=228; T0, n=108). Furthermore, 98.1% (767/782) of women were contacted for follow-up. Among the 767 women who were contacted, 95.3% (731/767) completed the follow-up survey. The analysis of the primary outcomes is ongoing and is expected to be completed by the end of 2021. CONCLUSIONS: The results from this trial will fill knowledge gaps on the effectiveness of tailored family planning counseling and male involvement in family planning on women's stated and realized contraceptive preferences. More generally, the study will provide evidence on how user-centered counseling may affect women's willingness to use and continue contraception to realize their contraceptive preferences. TRIAL REGISTRATION: American Economics Association's Registry for Randomized Controlled Trials AEARCTR-0004194; https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/4194/history/46808. Registry for International Development Impact Evaluations RIDIE-STUDY-ID-5ce4f42bbc2bf; https://ridie.3ieimpact.org/index.php?r=search/detailView&id=823. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/24884.Published versio

The Unintended Consequences of Conventions and Policies

In the first chapter, I analyze the dynamic labor effort response to an incentive structure under which productivity is uncertain and underperformance is punished. Using data on SQF practices from New York City, I find that more arrests, summonses, and non-criminal stops occur at the beginning of the month, which could be explained by police officers adopting a strategy of effort front-loading as a precautionary measure against failing to meet monthly performance expectations, thereby avoiding punishment. This is complemented by police officers reducing their labor in the later days of a month so as to avoid the exertion of a higher level of costly efforts than necessary given little incentives for “above-and-beyond” performance. Furthermore, as a month progresses, officers become more averse to difficult tasks and exert less effort in interactions that allow for an officer to use more discretion. This intra-month productivity cycle holds even when accounting for confounding factors that affect contemporaneous crime conditions, such as the timing of welfare payments. In the second chapter, which uses data from the FBI’s UCR and NIBR, I establish the causal relationship between the adoption of Missouri’s House Bill 1150 and the subsequent increase in incidents of motor vehicle thefts across Missouri. Accounting for broader contemporaneous national trends in motor vehicle thefts and trends in other types of larceny, this paper finds that an 8% to 14% increase in vehicle thefts arose within a year of the law going into effect, and a 30% to 43% increase within five years.In the final chapter, my coauthor and I examine the consequences of the alphabetical ordering of surnames. Using the data from the WLS, we find that those with surname initials ranked further from the beginning of the alphabet on average experience substantively worse outcomes in life. These adversities materialize as early as late adolescence through poorer experience in high school, lower human capital accumulation during tertiary education, and reduce early labor market success before dissipating by mid-adulthood. These effects are found to concentrate among those who are of ordinary intelligence and appearance and remain inconsequential for those distinctive in these regards