Berk Özler’s research while affiliated with World Bank and other places

This paper analyzes a randomized controlled trial of a personalized digital counseling intervention addressing informational constraints and choice architecture, cross-randomized with discounts for long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), such as intrauterine devices (IUDs). The counseling intervention encourages shared decision-making (SDM) using a tablet-based app, which provides a tailored ranking of modern methods to each client according to their elicited needs and preferences. Take-up of LARCs in the status quo regime at full price was 11%, which increased to 28% with discounts. SDM roughly tripled the share of clients adopting a LARC at full price to 35%, and discounts had no incremental impact in this group. Neither intervention affected the take-up of short-acting methods, such as the pill. Consistent with theoretical models of consumer search, SDM clients discussed more methods in depth, which led to higher adoption rates for second- or lower-ranked LARCs. Our findings suggest that low-cost individualized recommendations can potentially be as effective in increasing unfamiliar technology adoption as providing large subsidies.

This paper conducts a large, narrative review of interventions that might plausibly (a) increase educational attainment, (b) delay childbearing, and/or (c) delay marriage for adolescent girls in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Using 108 interventions from 78 studies, predominantly in LMICs, the paper summarizes the performance of 15 categories of interventions in improving these outcomes. Transfer programs emerge as broadly effective in increasing educational attainment but their effects on delaying fertility and marriage remain mixed and dependent on context. Construction of schools in underserved areas and the provision of information on returns to schooling and academic performance also increase schooling. No category of interventions is found to be categorically effective in delaying pregnancies and reducing child marriages among adolescent girls. While targeted provision of sexual and reproductive health services, including vouchers and subsidies for family planning, and increasing job opportunities for women seem promising, more research is needed to evaluate the longer-term effects of such interventions. We propose that future studies should aim to measure short-term outcomes that can form good surrogates for long-term welfare gains and should collect detailed cost information.

We evaluate the impact of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) in Turkey, the largest cash transfer program for international refugees in the world. We provide prima facie evidence that the program quickly caused substantial changes in household size and composition, with a net movement of primarily school-aged children from ineligible to eligible households. As a result, we observe a sharp decline in poverty and inequality in the entire study population. ESSN also caused a moderate increase in the diversity and frequency of food consumption among eligible households. To strike the right balance between transfer size and coverage, key parameters in the design of any cash transfer program, policymakers should consider the possibility that refugee populations may respond to their eligibility status by altering their household structure and living arrangements.

Background: We evaluated Girl Empower - an intervention that aimed to equip adolescent girls with the skills to make healthy, strategic life choices and to stay safe from sexual abuse using a cluster-randomized controlled trial with three arms: control, Girl Empower (GE), and GE+. Methods: GE delivered a life skills curriculum to girls aged 13-14 in Liberia, facilitated by local female mentors. In the GE + variation, a cash incentive payment was offered to caregivers for girls' participation in the program. We evaluated the impact of the program on seven pre-specified domains using standardized indices: sexual violence, schooling, sexual and reproductive health (SRH), psychosocial wellbeing, gender attitudes, life skills, and protective factors. Findings: Participation rates in the program were high in both GE and GE+, with the average participant attending 28 out of 32 sessions. At 24 months, the standardized effects of both GE and GE+, compared to control, on sexual violence, schooling, psychosocial wellbeing, and protective factors were small (β, ≤ 0.11 standard deviations [SD]) and not statistically significant at the 95% level of confidence. However, we found positive standardized effects on Gender Attitudes (GE: β, 0.206 SD, p<0.05; GE+: β, 0.228 SD, p<0.05), Life Skills (GE: β, 0.224 SD, p<0.05; GE+: β, 0.289 SD, p<0.01), and SRH (GE: β, 0.244 SD, p<0.01; GE+: β, 0.372 SD, p<0.01; F-test for GE = GE+: p = 0.075). Interpretation: Girl Empower led to sustained improvements in several important domains, including SRH, but did not reduce sexual violence among the target population.

The five-year evaluation of a cash transfer program targeted to adolescent females points to both the promise and limitations of cash transfers for persistent welfare gains. Conditional cash transfers produced sustained improvements in education and fertility for initially out-of-school females but caused no detectable gains in other outcomes. Significant declines in HIV prevalence, pregnancy and early marriage observed during the program among recipients of unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) evaporated quickly after the cessation of support. However, children born to UCT beneficiaries during the program had significantly higher height-for-age z-scores at follow-up pointing to the potential importance of cash during critical periods.

We formalize the optimal design of experiments when there is interference between units, that is, an individual's outcome depends on the outcomes of others in her group. We focus on randomized saturation designs, two-stage experiments that first randomize treatment saturation of a group, then individual treatment assignment. We map the potential outcomes framework with partial interference to a regression model with clustered errors, calculate standard errors of randomized saturation designs, and derive analytical insights about the optimal design. We show that the power to detect average treatment effects declines precisely with the ability to identify novel treatment and spillover effects. © 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.