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

本文研究了一种既能作为大学生学业成绩提升的承诺机制，又能作为大学生学业成绩提升的激励机制。该提案是行为经济学和教育学研究的交叉点，人们对一个领域可以引入另一个领域的见解越来越感兴趣。该提案采用混合方法——实地和实验室实验——探索一种创造性的机制来提高学习成绩。评估通过随机实验进行，旨在实现一系列目标，即：(1)对所提出机制的有效性得出更强的推论；(2)预测选择作为偏好和信念的函数进入成功的学习路径；(3)识别承诺和损失厌恶对参与者的重要性。这项建议将有助于研究一些直接问题，这些问题涉及奖励对承诺的影响，以及这种方案的偏好和自我选择之间的联系。考虑到大学总体出勤率和大学教育回报的增长，美国大学毕业率在过去20年里停滞不前尤其令人惊讶。一个自然要问的问题是，在进入大学的条件下，是什么因素决定了学生在大学成功的可能性。很少有研究来帮助确定可以帮助解决当前偏见问题的项目。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成绩的机制，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成绩的知识。

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.