Event Information
Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), also known as Randomized Evaluations, serve as a methodology for evaluating policy impacts and have gained increasing prominence. This method randomly assigns study participants to one or more groups: the "treatment group" receiving the intervention and the "control group" not. Subsequently, researchers measure the outcomes of interest in these groups. The primary objective of randomized evaluations is to provide a rigorous and unbiased estimation of the intervention’s causal impact, determining the specific changes in participants’ lives attributable to the program. Furthermore, these evaluations empower researchers and policymakers to tailor their research designs to address specific inquiries about program effectiveness and its underlying theory of change. Well-designed and meticulously executed RCTs can help understand the program’s effectiveness, potential unforeseen consequences, the primary beneficiaries, the efficacy of various program components, cost-effectiveness, and how it compares to other programs with similar goals.
This three-day intensive workshop aims to equip course participants with the fundamental aspects of RCTs. We will discuss the rationales for impact evaluations, the issues of causal inference and the counterfactual, determining sample size, treatment assignment, experimental data analysis, and management of impact evaluation projects.
Participants are expected to have graduate-level training in econometrics to follow the training. As we will draw on economics papers using RCTs published in reputable journals, having graduate-level training in microeconomics will also be an advantage.