 Highly prized experimentsWorld Development, 2020, vol. 127, issue C Abstract: The new Nobel prize winners have expertly popularized randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as the “tool-of-choice” for empirical research. The award is a good opportunity to reflect on the role of RCTs in development-policy evaluation. Unbiasedness is the tool’s main virtue; transparency is another. Practitioners should also be aware of some limitations. First, an RCT assigns the treatment in a different way to most real-world policies, which use purposive selection; given heterogeneous impacts, one is evaluating a different intervention. Second, the tool may only be feasible for non-random subsets of both the relevant populations and the policy options, biasing assessments of overall development effectiveness. Third, given budget-constraints and a bias-variance trade-off, a non-RCT may allow a larger sample size, making its trials often closer to the truth. There is a continuing need for a broad range of research methods for addressing pressing knowledge gaps in fighting poverty. Keywords: Randomized controlled trials; Bias; Sample selection (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:127:y:2020:i:c:s0305750x19304735 DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104824 Access Statistics for this article World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes More articles in World Development from Elsevier |
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