What are policy evaluation tools
Answers
Answer:
How can one evaluate whether a government labour market programme such as the Work Programme, or a subsidy to education such as the EMA is actually working? This course deals with the econometric and statistical tools that have been developed to estimate the causal impact on one or more outcomes of interest of any generic ‘treatment’ – from government programmes, policies or reforms, to the returns to education, the impact of unionism on wages, or of smoking on own and children's health.
After highlighting the ‘evaluation problem’ and the challenges it poses to the analyst, we focus on the main empirical methods to solve it. Specifically, in this 3 and a half-day course we cover:
Randomised social experiments
Naive non-experimental estimator
Natural experiments or instrumental variables
Regression Discontinuity Design
Regression analysis
Matching methods
Before-after
Difference-in-differences
Synthetic control methods
For each of these approaches, we give the basic intuition, discuss the assumptions needed for its validity, highlight the question it answers and formally show identification of the parameter of interest. The relative strengths and weaknesses of each approach are discussed in detail, drawing from example applications in the economics literature. Each method will be implemented ‘hands-on’ in practical Stata sessions.
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
frame a variety of microeconometric problems into the evaluation framework, and be aware of the concomitant methodological and modelling issues;
be discerning users of econometric output – able to interpret the results of applied work in the evaluation literature and to assess its strengths and limitations;
access the evaluation literature to further deepen knowledge on their own;
choose the appropriate evaluation method and strategy to estimate causal effects in different contexts; and
use simple statistical packages (we use Stata in the course) to implement the different evaluation methods to real data.
Explanation:
Policy evaluation is the systematic collection and analysis of information to make judgements about contexts, activities, characteristics, outcomes of one or more domain of the policy process.
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