Research

Does autonomy motivate volunteers to yield more effort? In this study, I examine whether and why volunteers exert more effort when they have the autonomy to choose their volunteering tasks and whether this choice increases their willingness to volunteer in the future. Further, I compare the effect of a task choice with the effect of a large competitive and performance contingent monetary reward that does not intend to crowd out the intrinsic motivation to volunteer. In a natural field experiment in partnership with a UNICEF funded NGO, around 4400 students in four public high schools in Tirana were asked to write awareness messages for one of the following causes: bullying, depression, and social inclusion of people with disabilities. Treatments varied in whether students could choose tasks, be matched with a random task, have their abilities matched with the task, or receive a sizeable ex-post performance contingent reward. Choosing tasks increases effort by 33% and enhances quality, leaving the willingness to volunteer in the future and task enjoyment unaffected. While this autonomy effect is unlikely to persist when choice is removed, I show that it is cost-effective to empower volunteers with autonomy rather than money. Lastly, I provide causal evidence that choice increases effort because people choose tasks they are best at and not because they value choice, care more about specific tasks, or feel a greater commitment to perform well when the choice is theirs. 

This paper examines whether and why charitable giving increases if donors have more choice about how their donations are used, in which choice consists of allowing donors to allocate their gift to three projects the way they prefer. In this project, I have partnered with the Down Syndrome Albania Foundation and 22 firms that support this NGO, and found that allowing donors to allocate their gifts increased giving mainly because they could target the projects they like. 

People often guide their present human capital decisions based on aspirations about the future, and sometimes, these decisions are inefficient because their aspirations are unrealistic. In collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Sports in Albania, this study proposes an individualized information intervention to change parents' unrealistic aspirations regarding their children's college education. The main research question is whether individualized information about the probability of college eligibility will affect the secondary education choices parents make for their children upon completing middle school, specifically in choosing between academic or vocational tracks. We hypothesize that parents misperceive their kids' chances of making it to college conditional on choosing the academic track and that updating their beliefs could change their aspirations and lead to more efficient secondary education decisions. Furthermore, this study explores the role of hope in shaping aspirations. Parents may harbor hope that their children will excel academically in high school, ultimately securing college admission. However, presenting individualized predictions about college eligibility based on (slightly/significantly) improved performance in high school may also impact parents' aspirations and actual decisions. We will then link the choices they make in the experiment with administrative data on actual enrollment decisions. Lastly, we plan to track the academic performance of treated and untreated kids in the first semesters of high school to test whether the individualized information provision will affect grades in the short/long-term.

We explore a continuous government intervention in Albanian primary and high schools that aims at teaching students coding through an engaging game-like environment. The main contribution of this project is to show that the coding intervention impacts performance in math and science tests, enhances critical thinking, but does not impact negatively the psychological and emotional well-being of kids. Further, comparing the impact of this intervention among primary school kids and high schoolers, we can add to the literature on the optimal timing of interventions in early to middle childhood development.