How a Simple Nudge Spurred More People to Say ‘Yes’ to Teach for America

Teach for America places thousands of recent college graduates in urban and rural public schools across the country each year. New Wharton research found that the inclusion of just one sentence in the job offer letter significantly increased the number of people who decided to accept. Business economics and public policy professors Clayton Featherstone and Judd Kessler joined Knowledge@Wharton to discuss how "social information" can affect the outcome of high-stakes decisions, such as choosing that first job. Their paper, "Can Social Information Affect What Job You Choose and Keep?," which was co-authored with Harvard visiting professor Lucas C. Coffman, was published in the January issue of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Full Story: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-power-of-social-information/