Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Performance based commitment devices and academic success

本论文主要研究的是一种既是承诺机制又是激励机制的大学生学业成就提升机制。这项提议处于行为经济学和教育学研究的交汇点，人们对一个领域可以给另一个领域带来的洞察力越来越感兴趣。该提案使用混合方法--实地实验和实验室实验--来探索一种提高学习成绩的创造性机制。评估是通过随机实验进行的，目的是实现一系列目标，即：(1)对拟议机制的有效性做出更有力的推断；(2)根据偏好和信念预测选择成功的研究路径；(3)确定承诺和损失厌恶对参与者的重要性。这项提案将有助于研究一些直接问题，这些问题涉及激励对承诺的影响，以及偏好和参加这样一个项目的自我选择之间的联系。考虑到整体大学出勤率和大学教育回报的增加，美国大学毕业率在过去20年里的停滞尤其令人惊讶。一个自然的问题是，什么因素决定了一个学生在大学取得成功的可能性，条件是进入大学。几乎没有做过什么研究来帮助确定可以帮助解决当前偏见问题的计划。这篇论文不仅介绍了一种通过帮助学生致力于学业目标来提高学生表现的机制，而且还将有助于形成关于如何利用不同的行为激励计划来提高学生总体表现的知识。

This dissertation centers on a novel mechanism that acts as both a commitment device and an incentive instrument for college students to improve their academic performance. The proposal is at the intersection of research in behavioral economics and education where there is a growing interest in the insights that one field can bring into the other. The proposal uses mixed methods - field and lab experiments - to explore a creative mechanism to improve academic performance. The evaluation is performed through randomized experiments designed to accomplish a set of goals, namely: (1) draw stronger inferences on the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism; (2) predict selection into a successful path of studies as a function of preferences and beliefs; (3) identify the importance of commitment and loss aversion for participants. The proposal will contribute to the study of a number of direct questions addressing the impact of incentives on commitment, and the link between preferences and self-selection into such a program.The stagnation of US college completion rates over the past 20 years has been particular surprising given increases in overall college attendance and returns to college education. A natural question to ask is what factors determine the likelihood of a student's success in college, conditional on entering. Little research has been done to help identify programs that could help battle problems of present bias. This dissertation not only introduces a mechanisms that boosts student performance by helping them commit to academic goals, but will also help to shape the knowledge of how different behaviorally-inspired incentive schemes can be utilized to boost student performance in general.