Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee, Rachel Glennerster, and Cynthia Kinnan report the results of an experiment in Hyderabad, India in which 104 slums were randomly split into two groups, one of which was selected for the opening of a branch of a microfinance institution called Spandana. They find that after 15-18 months of Spandana operations, households in the chosen slums were almost 9 percentage points more likely to have a microcredit loan, but they were no more likely to have started a new business. Even three years later, household consumption and average business profitability did not differ much between the slum areas with and without Spandana. The introduction of this microfinance institution was not associated with changes in health, education, or women’s empowerment.

Robert Fairlie and Jonathan Robinson randomly provided free computers to 1,123 students in grades 6-10 attending 15 schools across California. These students did not previously have a computer, so their computer use increased substantially. However, the experiment had no effects on grades, test scores, credits earned, attendance, or disciplinary actions.

Mark Jacobsen and Arthur Van Benthem examine the timing of decisions to scrap used cars and the relationship between changes in scrap rates, the gasoline price, and used car resale values. They find that a gasoline price increase or decrease of $1 alters the number of fuel-efficient versus fuel-inefficient vehicles scrapped by 18 percent. They estimate the sensitivity of scrap decisions to changes in used car values – something they call the "scrap elasticity" – to be about -0.7. In terms of fuel economy standards, these scrap elasticities suggest that 13-23 percent of expected fuel savings will "leak away" through the used vehicle market