{"id":3482,"date":"2011-09-06T05:00:42","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T09:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=3482"},"modified":"2011-09-06T09:43:21","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T13:43:21","slug":"big-questions-not-project-evaluations-blattman-on-impact-evaluation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/3482","title":{"rendered":"“Big Questions, Not Project Evaluations”: Blattman on Impact Evaluation"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week in my development seminar, we will be discussing the background ideas and methods proper to development microeconomics.<\/p>\n

In order to do so, and to make sure that everyone has a clear understanding of what’s at stake, I must make a necessary digression about the use of linear regression<\/a>\u00a0as well as about the idea of causality<\/a> in the social sciences.<\/p>\n

As such, a recent\u00a0post<\/a>\u00a0on impact evaluation by Chris Blattman\u00a0turns out to be quite timely:<\/p>\n

“My point in 2008: to talk about how impact evaluations could better serve the needs of\u00a0policymakers, and accelerate learning.<\/p>\n

Frankly, the benefits of the\u00a0simple<\/em>\u00a0randomized control trial have been (in my opinion)\u00a0overestimated. But with the right design and approach, they hold even more\u00a0potential than has been promised or realized.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve learned this the hard way.<\/p>\n

Many of my colleagues have more experience than I do, and have learned these lessons\u00a0already. What I have to say is not new to them. But I don\u2019t think the lessons are\u00a0widely recognized just yet.<\/p>\n

So, when asked to speak to DFID again yesterday (to a conference on evaluating governance programs), I decided to update a little. They had read my 2.0 musings, and so the\u00a0talk was an attempt to draw out what more I\u2019ve learned in the three years since.<\/p>\n

The short answer: policymakers and donors \u2014 don\u2019t do M&E, do R&D. It\u2019s not about the method. Randomized trails are a means to an end. Use them, but wisely and strategically. And don\u2019t outsource your learning agenda to academics.”<\/p>\n

Here are Chris’ slides<\/a> for his DFID talk.<\/p>\n

His point is that agencies like DFID should focus on funding research that looks at big questions about human behavior rather than research that simply asks whether specific interventions have any impact.<\/p>\n

Another, highly underappreciated point Chris makes is that everyone who does impact evaluation makes implicit assumption about how the world works, but very few actually go so far as to state those assumptions — a point I have often heard made about randomized controlled trials by those who are more structurally minded.<\/p>\n

I believe this is exactly the way to reconcile randomistas with relatively more structural empirical researchers. I also believe that many convenient assumptions — for example, the assumption that the principal leaves no surplus to the agent in a standard principal-agent model, to take an example I know well — will not hold up to such scrutiny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week in my development seminar, we will be discussing the background ideas and methods proper to development microeconomics. In order to do so, and<\/p>\n

Continue reading“Big Questions, Not Project Evaluations”: Blattman on Impact Evaluation<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,55,49,48,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-development","category-economics","category-impact-evaluation","category-methods","category-social-sciences","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-Ua","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3482"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3575,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3482\/revisions\/3575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}