The usefulness of experiments

Jeffrey Smith

IZA World of Labor, 2018, No 436, 436

Abstract: Non-experimental evaluations of programs compare individuals who choose to participate in a program to individuals who do not. Such comparisons run the risk of conflating non-random selection into the program with its causal effects. By randomly assigning individuals to participate in the program or not, experimental evaluations remove the potential for non-random selection to bias comparisons of participants and non-participants. In so doing, they provide compelling causal evidence of program effects. At the same time, experiments are not a panacea, and require careful design and interpretation.

Keywords: experiment; random assignment; causality; evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C52 C90 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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