RCTs to Scale: Comprehensive Evidence from Two Nudge Units
Stefano DellaVigna and Elizabeth Linos gather every randomised trial run by two large United States nudge units, covering millions of people, and set them beside nudge trials published in academic journals. The published trials show a large average effect on take-up, and the nudge-unit trials a much smaller one that is still statistically significant. The authors attribute most of the gap to selective publication, made worse by low statistical power, and most of the rest to differences in the interventions themselves.
Stefano DellaVigna and Elizabeth Linos gather every randomised trial run by two large United States nudge units, covering millions of people, and set them beside nudge trials published in academic journals. The published trials show a large average effect on take-up, and the nudge-unit trials a much smaller one that is still statistically significant. The authors attribute most of the gap to selective publication, made worse by low statistical power, and most of the rest to differences in the interventions themselves.
Written from the abstract as published with the paper in its Crossref record, read 2026-10-29.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
DellaVigna, S., & Linos, E. (2022). RCTs to Scale: Comprehensive Evidence from Two Nudge Units. Econometrica, 90(1), 81-116. doi:10.3982/ECTA18709.