Recipients of PSC Small Grant Awards

We propose a pilot study of a project targeting the spread of sexually transmitted infections in Ecuador by testing the causal effect of offering sex workers economic incentives to practice safe sex. Our approach builds on existing research in four fundamental ways: (1) using economic incentives— namely, high-frequency cash transfers conditional on disease status—to alter behavior; (2) testing causal effects using a randomized controlled study design; (3) conditioning transfers on biological markers of disease rather than self-reported survey responses; and (4) enabling cost-benefit analysis by testing the conditional cash transfer against conditions that mimic existing interventions elsewhere.