Week 2: Randomized Control Trials
Guiding Questions
What works? This week, we look at how RCTs identify the causal effects of policy innovations. Glennerster and Takavarasha provide a practically-minded introduction to RCTs in the context of development policy. Reading the two chapters, focus on understanding the concepts ‘causality’ and ‘randomization’ and how their interplay allows to assess if a policy works. In the seminar, we are going to discuss two RCTs (Chetty et al. 2018 and Heller 2014)
Required readings
- Glennerster, Rachel and Takavarasha, Kudzai (2013). Running Randomized Evaluations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapter 1-2.
- Chetty, Raj and Hendren, Nathaniel and Katz, Lawrence F (2016). The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment. American Economic Review, 106(4), pp. 855–902.
- Heller, Sara B. (2014). Summer Jobs Reduce Violence Among Disadvantaged Youth. Science, 346(6214), pp. 1219–1223.
Further reading (RCTs)
- Gerber, Alan S. and Green, Donald P. (2012). Field Experiments. Design, Analysis, and Interpretation. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- Duflo, Esther and Banerjee, Abhijit (2011). Poor Economics. New York: PublicAffairs.
- Banerjee, Abhijit V and Duflo, Esther (2019). Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to our Biggest Problems. New York: PublicAffairs.
Further reading (Chicago Summer Job RCT)
- Davis, Jonathan M. V. and Heller, Sara B. (2017). Using Causal Forests to Predict Treatment Heterogeneity: An Application to Summer Jobs. American Economic Review, 107(5), pp. 546–550.
- Davis, Jonathan M. V. and Heller, Sara B. (2020). Rethinking the Benefits of Youth Employment Programs: The Heterogeneous Effects of Summer Jobs. Review of Economics and Statistics, 102(4), pp. 664–677.