Incorporating ethics and welfare into randomized experiments

Yusuke Narita ()

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021, vol. 118, issue 1, e2008740118

Abstract: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) enroll hundreds of millions of subjects and involve many human lives. To improve subjects’ welfare, I propose a design of RCTs that I call Experiment-as-Market (EXAM). EXAM produces a welfare-maximizing allocation of treatment-assignment probabilities, is almost incentive-compatible for preference elicitation, and unbiasedly estimates any causal effect estimable with standard RCTs. I quantify these properties by applying EXAM to a water-cleaning experiment in Kenya. In this empirical setting, compared to standard RCTs, EXAM improves subjects’ predicted well-being while reaching similar treatment-effect estimates with similar precision.

Keywords: social experiment; clinical trial; A/B test; mechanism design; experimental design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nas:journl:v:118:y:2021:p:e2008740118

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