holly.dykstra Faculty websiteCV
Dr. Holly Dykstra is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Konstanz. Her research studies how contextual frictions like scarcity, effort, and hassle costs shape policy-relevant behavior, especially in intertemporal decisions. She works in behavioral economics, public economics, and household finance.
She is an affiliate of the Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut and Harvard University's STAR Lab. In her research, she often runs online experiments as well as field experiments in cooperation with partner organizations. She has conducted research with the Behavioral Insights Team, the Mayors Innovation Project, a number of private companies, as well as city, state, and national government agencies in the U.S. and Europe.
She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University and an A.B. in Economics from Columbia University. Prior to graduate school, she worked at the U.S. Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C.
Behavioral interventions often focus on reducing friction to encourage behavior change. In contrast, we provide evidence that adding friction can promote behavior change when the target behavior requires follow-through. In collaboration with the Oregon Department of Transportation, we conducted a field experiment (N = 27,227) to test whether adding friction during an initial sign-up process for a new carpooling platform increases usage. Our results support this possibility: while a more effortful sign-up process led to a 25% decrease in sign-ups to the carpool platform, overall intensity of usage increased. Importantly, these results were only partly explained by selection effects: using an intention-to-treat analysis, participants who were randomly assigned to the more effortful sign-up process took 1.6 times more carpool trips per week over a four-month period as compared to those in the less effortful sign-up process. Of the 9,417 observed trips, the more effortful sign-up group took almost 800 more trips. To test generalizability and mechanisms, we conducted a second, pre-registered online experiment where participants completed transcription tasks and could sign up for a return opportunity the next day. Participants who were randomly assigned to a more effortful sign-up process were 37% more likely to return, and they completed more work overall. These results suggest that adding friction may be an overlooked strategy that could help promote behavior change, especially when follow-through, rather than initial uptake, is the primary goal.
ABSTRACT: Income-based rents in public housing weaken incentives to work. We test a policy paired with behaviorally informed outreach that makes the payoff to working salient. Cambridge’s Rent-to-Save pilot let residents keep more from earnings increases by escrowing higher rent payments and rebating them as a lump-sum transfer. Exploiting automatic enrollment at two housing sites, we estimate household-head earnings rose 17% (∼$1,400/year) and use of benefits fell 7.5%. There is no evidence of spillover effects on non-household head earnings, providing evidence for the salience channel. A simple, salient in-work benefit embedded in normal public housing operations can offset rent-based disincentives.
ABSTRACT: Agents insist on agency for many reasons, including a desire to obtain their preferred choice and a desire for control. Agents may also forgo agency because of costs associated with making a decision. In a large experiment, we find that even a small “consideration cost” makes individuals more willing to forgo agency (let someone else choose). When presented with a menu of investment options, decision-makers are much more willing to forgo agency if choosing an investment option for themselves requires even a cursory consideration of the investment options. Strikingly, this consideration effect arises even among experienced decision-makers. We also observe that individuals correctly expect consideration costs to affect agency decisions and but sometimes erroneously expect demographic differences.
ABSTRACT: Individuals often behave impatiently when making financial decisions for the future. This paper proposes and tests that the timing of decisions relative to payday—which leads to temporary but recurring conditions of scarcity—influences their choice. In a large pre-registered experiment, I ask participants to adopt a commitment device that binds them to being patient. Participants who make this decision eight days before their payday, rather than one day after payday, are 34% more likely to take up commitment. This coincides with when individuals experience the most financial scarcity, and provides evidence that intertemporal decisions are affected by current psychological states.
ABSTRACT: Dramatic reductions in carbon emissions must take place immediately. A human-centric method of reducing environmental impacts is to “nudge” people away from single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs) toward more sustainable commuting options. While an abundance of research has focused on external determinants of mode choice, we know much less about the behavioral determinants. The field of behavioral science is overdue for a focus on transportation. This paper is meant to facilitate communication between researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in part by developing a behaviorally-informed framework that can be leveraged by policymakers, government, and organizations worldwide. We also describe the founding of our multidisciplinary team and outline lessons learned.
ABSTRACT: 60% of Americans eligible for unemployment benefits are not receiving them (Forsythe & Yang, 2021; BLS, 2023; Lachowska et al., 2025). Amid widespread low and differential take-up rates of social programs (Ko & Moffitt, 2022) and lack of new solutions to address this (DellaVigna & Linos, 2022; Linos et al., 2022), we design a tailored generative AI assistant to overcome the barriers workers face in applying for benefits. We assess its effectiveness in a randomized controlled trial.