RCTs

More from the Series

Blog Post
Sharing Research Results with Participants: An Ethical Discussion
May 13, 2021
It is widely recognized that social science research involving human participants should be based on the principles of “doing good” and “mitigating harm.” While research results are often shared with academics and policymakers alike, it is unclear whether—and how often—they are shared with the parti...
WORKING PAPERS
Towards Improved and More Transparent Ethics in Randomised Controlled Trials in Development Social Science
February 03, 2021
This paper surveys common ethical concerns and proposes a series of practical suggestions to help researchers and policymakers be more mindful of and transparent about ethics as they consider, design, implement, and report randomised controlled trials and other impact evaluations in development sett...
Blog Post
Practical Suggestions for More Ethical Social Science RCTs
February 03, 2021
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in development have never failed to inspire discussion, on whether they offer methodological advantages, whether they answer (or distract from answering) big questions in development, or whether they are ethical. Several recent RCTs have ignited heated debates abo...
Blog Post
A Quick Guide to 100+ Publications by Economics Nobel Winner Esther Duflo
October 29, 2019
Two weeks ago, Esther Duflo won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences<, together with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer, “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.” In the blog post below, you’ll find a quick introduction to more than a hundred of ...
WORKING PAPERS
Enhancing Young Children’s Language Acquisition through Parent-Child Book-Sharing: A Randomized Trial in Rural Kenya - Working Paper 502
February 07, 2019
Worldwide, 250 million children under five (43 percent) are not meeting their developmental potential because they lack adequate nutrition and cognitive stimulation in early childhood. Several parent support programs have shown significant benefits for children’s development, but the programs are of...
Blog Post
In Bringing a Literacy Project to Scale, has Kenya Found a Holy Grail?
October 26, 2018
An article of faith among development economists is that “evidence-based policy” holds the promise of faster progress. Barbara Bruns set out to find a rigorously evaluated pilot whose evidence had led to a program at scale. It wasn’t easy.
WORKING PAPERS
Should the Randomistas (Continue to) Rule? - Working Paper 492
August 16, 2018
The rising popularity of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in development applications has come with continuing debates on the pros and cons of this approach. The paper revisits the issues.