Workshop 2: Rigorous Impact Evaluation: Randomized Control Trials and Non-experimental Methods

lecturer Prof. Dr. Andreas Landmann, Junior Professor for Development Economics, Göttingen
target group: beginners
language: English
location: seminar room 2, convention centre by the observatory

content:
Across social sciences, we are interested in the effectiveness of interventions such as school reforms, labor market trainings, physical and mental health therapy, marketing, technological innovation, and many more on countless outcomes. This course gives an introduction to rigorous quantitative impact evaluation methods aiming at measuring causal effect of such interventions. We will start with an overview of methods analyzing non-experimental data and discuss their respective requirements as well as strengths and weaknesses. Afterwards, a strong focus of the course will be on so-called Randomized Control Trials or Field Experiments. We will discuss the “Why?” and “How?” of experimental designs, including ways to tackle practical implementation challenges. This is supposed to be an applied course and it includes practical training in many of the modules covered.

required reading:

  • Angrist, Joshua D., and Jörn-Steffen Pischke. 2009. Mostly Harmless Econometrics : An Empiricist ’ s Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Gertler, Paul J., Sebastian Martinez, Patrick Premand, Laura B. Rawlings, and Christel M. J. Vermeersch. 2011. Impact Evaluation in Practice. The World Bank. http://tinyurl.com/kbgwv9p.
  • Glennerster, Rachel., and Kudzai Takavarasha. 2013. Running Randomized Evaluations: A Practical Guide. Princeton University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt4cgd52.



course requirements (2 credits):
t. b. a.