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Do informational interventions work because they lead subjects to merely update
beliefs in the right direction or, to a large extent, because they increase
the salience of the decision they target? We randomly assign parents to either
an information group, who receives text messages with weekly data on their
child’s attendance and school effort, or a salience group, who receives messages
that try to redirect their attention without child-specific information. While
information has large impacts on attendance, test scores and grade promotion
relative to the control group, outcomes in the salience group improve by at
least as much.
