Automating Short-Term Payroll Savings: Evidence from Two Large U.K. Experiments

Contributions: conceptualized paper (SB, JC, JB, DL), wrote paper (SB, JC), edited paper (JB, DL), implemented empirical analysis (SB, JG), project leadership (SB, DL). These trials were convened by Nest Insight, a public-benefit research and innovation center, which is part of Nest Corporation, a U.K. public corporation. This research was reviewed by the Harvard and NBER Institutional Review Boards and determined to be exempt human subjects research. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not reflect the views or position of Harvard, Yale, NBER, Nest, the implementing organizations, SUEZ, TransaveUK, Wagestream, or Wagestream’s client employers. The authors are grateful to Arie Kapteyn and Richard Lombardo for helpful comments; to Emma Stockdale for excellent project management, research support, and meticulous data merging; to Jo Phillips for tireless project leadership; to the whole Nest Insight team for convening the trial; to Simon Ashton, Michael Beeson, Oliver Bethell, Yash Daga, Richard Loftus, Sophie Orr, Roger Shelton, Stacy Standen, Michelle Sutton, Lisa Thomas, Claire Townsend, and Emily Trant for implementing the experiment and sharing data; to Katie Duxbury, Helen Spurr, Alex Henley, and their colleagues at Bupa UK and the Co-operative Group Ltd. for their involvement in the trial; to the BlackRock Foundation and the Money and Pensions Service (UK) for their support of the Nest Insight program, which provided the funding for our research; and to the Pershing Square Fund for Research on the Foundations of Human Behavior for financial support. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.