Key Readings

Impact Evaluation and Development

• Baker, Judy. 2000. Evaluating the Impact of Development Projects on Poverty: A Handbook for Practitioners. Directions in Development, World Bank, Washington, D.C. Also available in French, Russian and Spanish.
• Ravallion, Martin. 1999. "The Mystery of the Vanishing Benefits: Ms. Speedy Analyst's Introduction to Evaluation." Policy Research Working Paper 2153, World Bank, Development Economics Research Group, Washington, D.C.
• Ravallion, Martin. 2003. “Assessing the Poverty Impact of an Assigned Program.” In Francois Bourguignon and Luiz A. Pereira da Silva (eds.) The Impact of Economic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution: Evaluation Techniques and Tools, Volume 1. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Ravallion, Martin. 2006. “Evaluating Anti-Poverty Programs.” Policy Research Working Paper 3625 World Bank, Development Economics Research Group, Washington, D.C. (Also available in Spanish)
• Duflo, Esther, Rachel Glennerster, and Michael Kremer. 2004. “Randomized Evaluations of Interventions in Social Science Delivery.” Development Outreach March 2004.
• Duflo, Esther. 2004. “Scaling up and Evaluation.” ABCDE 2004.
• Banerjee, Abhijit and others. “Making Aid Work,” Boston Review, July/August 2006.
• Prennushi, G., G. Rubio, and K. Subbarao. 2000. "Monitoring and Evaluation." In Sourcebook for Poverty Reduction Strategies. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

General Methodological Papers

• Angrist, Joshua and Alan Krueger. 1999. “Empirical Strategies in Labor Economics.” Handbook of Labor Economics 3(1): 1277-1366.
• Heckman, James and E.J. Vytlacil. 2006. “Econometric Evaluation of Social Programs.” Handbook of Econometrics, Volume 6, James Heckman and E. Leamer, eds., Amsterdam: North Holland.
• Heckman, James, R. Lalonde and J. Smith (1999), “The Economics and Econometrics of Active Labor Market Programs.” Handbook of Labor Economics, Volume 3, Ashenfelter, A. and D. Card, eds., Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.
• Imbens, Guido. 2004. “Nonparametric Estimation of Average Treatment Effects under Exogeneity: A Review.” Review of Economics and Statistics 86(1): 4-29.
• Meyer, Bruce D. 1995. “Natural and Quasi-Experiments in Economics.” Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 13(2): 151-161.
• Shadish, Cook, and Campbell, 2002. Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Experimental

• Burtless, Gary. 1995. "The Case for Randomized Field Trials in Economic and Policy Research." Journal of Economic Perspectives 9(2):63-84. Available to authorized users at http://www.jstor.org 
• Coady, David, Limin Wang, and Xinyi Dai. 2001. "Community Programs and Women's Participation The Chinese Experience." Policy Research Working Paper 2622, World Bank, Development Economics Research Group, Washington D.C. 
• Duflo, Esther & Michael Kremer. 2005. “Use of Randomization in the Evaluation of Development Effectiveness.” in George Pitman, Osvaldo Feinstein and Gregory Ingram (eds.) Evaluating Development Effectiveness. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
• Grossman, Jean Baldwin. 1994. “Evaluating Social Policies: Principles and U.S. Experience.” The World Bank Research Observer 9(2): 159-80. 
• Heckman, James J. and Jeffrey A. Smith. 1997. "The Sensitivity of Experimental Impact Estimates: Evidence from the National JTPA Study." NBER Working Paper 6105 (July), National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. 
• Heckman, James J., and Edward Vytlacil. 2001."Policy-Relevant Treatment Effects." The American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), 91(2): 107-111. 
• Heckman, James J., and Jeffrey A. Smith. 1995."Assessing the Case for Social Experiments." Journal of Economic Perspectives 9(2): 85-110.
• Heckman, James J., Hidehiko Ichimura, Jeffrey Smith and Petra E. Todd. 1998. "Characterizing Selection Bias Using Experimental Data." Econometrica 66: 1017-98.
• Heckman, James J., Jeffrey A. Smith, and Christopher Taber. 1998. "Accounting for Dropouts in Evaluation of Social Programs." The Review of Economics and Statistics, 80(1): 1-11. 
• Heckman, James J., Jeffrey A. Smith, and Nancy Clements. 1997."Making the Most Out of Programme Evaluations and Social Experiments: Accounting for Heterogeneity in Programme Impacts." The Review of Economic Studies, 64: 487-535. 
• Holland, Paul W. 1986. “Statistics and Causal Inference.” Journal of the American Statistical Association.  81(1): 945-960.
• Kremer, Michael. 2003. “Randomized Evaluations of Educational Programs in Developing Countries: Some Lessons.” American Economic Review 93(2): 102-106.
• Moffitt, Robert. 2003. “The Role of Randomized Field Trials in Social Science Research: A Perspective from Evaluations of Reforms of Social Welfare Programs” mimeo, Institute for Research on Poverty.
• Zhu, Shu-Hong. 1999. "A Method to obtain a Randomized Control Group where it seems Impossible." Evaluation Review 23(4): 363-77.

Non-experimental and Quasi-experimental

• Angrist, Joshua and Alan Krueger. 2001. "Instrumental Variables and the Search for Identification: From Supply and Demand to Natural Experiments." Journal of Economic Perspectives 15(4): 69-87.
• Angrist, Joshua and Victor Lavy. 1999. “Using Maimonides’ Rule to Estimate the Effect of Class Size on Scholastic Achievement.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 114(2): 533-575.
• Angrist, Joshua, Guido Imbens and Donald Rubin. 1996. “Identification of Causal Effects Using Instrumental Variables.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 91(434): 444-455.
• Battistin, Erich and Enrico Rettore. 2002. “Testing for Programme Effects in a Regression Discontinuity Design with Imperfect Compliance.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 165: 39-57.
• Dehejia, Rajeev H. and Sadek Wahba. 1999. “Causal Effects in Nonexperimental Studies: Reevaluating the Evaluation of Training Programs.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 94(448): 1053–1062.
• Glazerman, Steven, Dan Levy and David Myers. 2003. “Nonexperimental versus Experimental Estimates of Earnings Impacts.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 589(1): 63-93.
• Heckman, James J. 1989. "Choosing Among Alternative Nonexperimental Methods for Estimating the Impact of Social Programs: The Case of Manpower Training." NBER Working Paper 2861 (February), National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. 
• Heckman, James J., Hidehiko Ichimura, and Petra E. Todd. 1997. "Matching as an Econometric Evaluation Estimator: Evidence from Evaluating a Job Training Program." Review of Economic Studies, 64: 605-654. 
• Hotz, V. Joseph, Guido Imbens, Julie Mortimer. 2005. “Predicting the Efficacy of Future Training Programs Using Past Experiences at Other Locations.” Journal of Econometrics 125: 241-270.
• Jalan, Jyotsna, and Martin Ravallion. 1999. "Income Gains to the Poor from Workfare: Estimates for Argentina's Trabajar Program." Policy Research Working Paper 2149, World Bank, Development Economics Research Group, Washington, D.C.
• LaLonde, Robert J. 1986. "Evaluating the Econometric Evaluations of Training Programs with Experimental Data." American Economic Review 76(4): 604-20. 
• Michalopoulos, Charles, Howard S. Bloom, and Carolyn J. Hill. 2004. “Can Propensity-score Methods Match the Findings from a Random Assignment Evaluation of Mandatory Welfare-to-Work Programs?” The Review of Economics and Statistics 86(1): 156-79.
• Van der Klaauw, Wilbert. 1997. “A Regression-Discontinuity Evaluation of the Effect of Financial Aid Offers on College Enrollment.” C.V. Starr Working Paper RR# 97-10.

Economy-Wide Program Evaluation

• Bourguignon, F., L. Pereira Da Silva, and Nicholas H. Stern. 2002. "Evaluating the Poverty Impact of Economic Policies: Some Analytical Challenges." Processed. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.
• Lise, Jeremy, Seitz, Shannon and Jeffrey Smith. 2004 “Equilibrium Policy Experiments and the Evaluation of Social Programs.” NBER Working Paper 10283 (February), National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.
• Todd, Petra and Kenneth I. Wolpin (2006). “Ex-Ante Evaluation of Social Programs.” PIER Working Paper 06-022.
• Heckman, James J. 2001. "Micro Data, Heterogeneity, and the Evaluation of Public Policy: Nobel Lecture." Journal of Political Economy 109(4): 673-748. 
• Heckman, James J., Lance Lochner, and Christopher Taber. 1998. "General-Equilibrium Treatment Effects: A Study of Tuition Policy." The American Economic Review 88(2): 381-86.

 Back to top

Related Sections:

• See Country Documents for country specific readings. 
• See Training Events and Materials for key presentations.

For readings on related topics, see:

• Key Readings under Poverty Analysis
• Key Readings under Poverty Monitoring
• Country Documents under Poverty Analysis
• Country Documents under Poverty Monitoring