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

本论文的中心是一个新的机制，既作为承诺手段和激励工具，为大学生提高他们的学业成绩。该提案处于行为经济学和教育研究的交叉点，人们对一个领域可以带入另一个领域的见解越来越感兴趣。该提案使用混合方法-现场和实验室实验-探索提高学习成绩的创造性机制。评估是通过随机实验进行的，旨在实现一组目标，即：（1）对所提出的机制的有效性进行更强的推断;（2）预测选择成功的学习路径作为偏好和信念的函数;（3）确定参与者的承诺和损失规避的重要性。该提案将有助于研究一系列直接问题，这些问题涉及激励措施对承诺的影响，以及偏好与自我选择进入此类计划之间的联系。鉴于大学总体入学率和大学教育回报率的增加，美国大学毕业率在过去20年的停滞尤其令人惊讶。一个很自然的问题是，什么因素决定了一个学生在大学里成功的可能性，条件是进入。很少有研究已经做了，以帮助确定程序，可以帮助战斗的问题，目前的偏见。本论文不仅介绍了一种机制，通过帮助他们致力于学术目标，提高学生的表现，但也将有助于塑造如何不同的行为激励计划可以用来提高学生的表现一般的知识。

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.