Pilot Core

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Two overarching questions guide the activities of the NBER Roybal Center: (1) What factors influence households' health and savings decisions? (2) Which interventions based on mechanisms in behavioral economics generate behavior change? We study these questions by applying and testing models in economics, psychology, and other behavioral sciences. We are particularly interested in identifying interventions that are cost-effective and scalable and that significantly change behavior. We use a wide range of methods, including field experiments, natural experiments, laboratory experiments, and applied theory. The NBER Roybal Center emphasizes individual decision-making, a focus that is particularly relevant in light of the growing role of individual choice in the health and savings domains. Today individuals themselves play a key decision-making role through institutions like defined contribution pension plans, IRAs, health insurance exchanges, and consumer-driven health care. Decisions about insurance plans, provider choice, diet, exercise, medication adherence, preventive care, retirement savings rates, asset allocation, and retirement wealth decumulation fall on the individual and not on employers or governments. The NBER Roybal Center seeks out opportunities for translating basic science results from research in the economics of health and aging into practical applications that improve health and economic well-being at older ages. We also translate successful behavioral interventions developed in the domain of retirement savings to the domain of health and, vice versa. Our first set of pilots will address the following questions. (1) Can savings can be increased by turning loan repayments into savings contributions when the loan is fully repaid? (2) What is the effect of different delay horizons when committing to start saving in the future? (3) How does observability and feedback increase hand hygiene among healthcare workers? (4) Can annuitization rates be increased by broadly framing the annuitization decision and changing the default? (5) Can an active choice intervention raise the fraction of households that adopt an advanced directive for end of life medical care? (6) What determines the savings flows into Health Savings Accounts and the use of medical services by households with such accounts?