Impact Evaluation - Key Readings

Impact Evaluation: Key Readings

Impact Evaluation and Development
General Methodological Papers
Experimental
Non-Experimental and Quasi-Experimental
Economy-wide Program Evaluation

Bamberger, Michael and Angeli Kirk, eds. (2009). "Making Smart Policy: Using Impact Evaluation for Policy Making - Case Studies on Evaluations that Influenced Policy." Doing Impact Evaluation 14. World Bank, Washington, D.C.

Habicht, Jean-Pierre (2009). "Methodologies to Evaluate the Impact of Large Scale Nutrition Programs." Doing Impact Evaluation 13. World Bank, Washington, D.C.

Amin, Samia, Jishnu Das and Markus Goldstein, eds. (2008). "Are You Being Served? New Tools for Measuring Service Delivery." World Bank, Washington, D.C.

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.

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Key Readings