Comparing Quasi-Experimental Designs and Structural Models for Policy Evaluation: The Case of a Reform of Lone Parental Welfare

Chiara Pronzato

No 6803, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper compares two different ways of doing policy evaluation: on the one hand, quasi-experimental methods (or "ex-post" evaluations) which exploit the introduction of a reform and identify its effect by comparing treated and untreated individuals; on the other hand, structural models (or "ex-ante" evaluations) which are based on economic theory and predict the effect of potential reforms by using the estimates of behavioural parameters. The comparison is carried out using an empirical case. In 1998, in Norway, a major welfare reform changed the rules of the most generous benefit for lone parents: it increased the amount of the benefit and introduced working requirements. Using a quasi-experimental evaluation approach, it is found a positive effect of the reform on lone mothers' employment. In this paper, I estimate a static structural model of work and welfare participation decisions and compare the results using the two different approaches. Despite the differences in the assumptions I make for the two models, results are fairly comparable.

Keywords: discrete choice modelling; quasi-experimental evaluation designs; in-work benefits; lone mothers; ex-ante and ex-post evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C25 I38 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2012-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published - published as 'Fighting Lone Mothers’ Poverty Through In-Work Benefits: Methodological Issues and Policy Suggestions' in: CESifo Economic Studies, 2015, 61 (1), 95 - 122

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6803.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6803

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().