Regular information and health: evidence from a field experiment with undergraduate students

Bernatzky, Marianne; Cabrera, José María; Cid, Alejandro

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URI

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12806/1344

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Author

Bernatzky, Marianne ; Cabrera, José María ; Cid, Alejandro

Editor

Universidad de Montevideo, Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales y Economía, Departamento de Economía

Date

2015

Extensión

22 p.

Abstract

We run a randomized controlled trial with the aim of evaluating the effects of a health seminarcomplemented with weekly reminders on health outcomes. Our research design exploits the excess of applicants over the intervention capacity. In this 4-month interventionwith undergraduate students, we provide information on preventive behaviors and healthy habits and on how to modify personal behaviors that could derive in chronical illnesses. We find that all students whowere subject to the treatment improved theirknowledgerelative to the controlgroup. But they were not able to translate itintohealthier behaviors, neither self-reported nor objectively measured by a physician.We hypothesize that high discount rates, overconfidenceand the lack of complementary inputs may explain our findings.