Beyond ‘context matters’: Context and external validity in impact evaluation

Martin J. Williams

World Development, 2020, vol. 127, issue C

Abstract: Issues of external validity and adaptation of policy to local context are: 1) the focus of many critiques of experimental methods; 2) an exciting and active frontier of research; and 3) a central practical challenge for policymakers seeking to make use of experimental evidence. All parties agree that “context matters”, but how exactly should policymakers integrate evidence from elsewhere with information about their local context in making decisions about transporting and scaling up successful interventions? This essay briefly surveys what experimental methods and recent theoretical and econometric advances can say about the external validity of experimental evaluations, and what gaps this still leaves for policymakers. It then suggests a simple and general framework for external validity and policy adaptation based on the interaction of policy mechanisms with features of context, and discusses mechanism mapping as a practical tool to help policymakers make these judgments.

Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:127:y:2020:i:c:s0305750x19304826

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104833

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