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Publications (128)
Experimental studies using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are a powerful tool in policy analysis. They have been sometimes hailed as the best means of identifying ‘what works’ in development policy. However, it would be unwise to rely solely on findings from RCTs to guide policy. While RCTs...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– A Porous Dialectic
Part of Journal Special Issue
Experiments in Development Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Experiments in Development Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Better Policies? Better Politics?
Part of Journal Special Issue
Experiments in Development Economics
In recent years, experimental methods have been both highly celebrated, and roundly criticized, as a means of addressing core questions in the social sciences. They have received particular attention in the analysis of development interventions. The studies in this special issue push beyond...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Opportunities and Challenges
Part of Journal Special Issue
Experiments in Development Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Experiments in Development Economics
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Definitions and Diagrams
Part of Journal Special Issue
Experiments in Development Economics
Book Chapter
– Long-Run Country Income Dynamics in Africa
This chapter examines the country-level dynamics of long-run growth in Africa between 1975 and 2005. We are primarily interested in examining how growth has affected mobility and the distribution of income among countries. We analyse changes in the cross-country income structure and convergence. We...
Working Paper
pdf
Social scientists are increasingly engaging in experimental research projects of importance for public policy in developing areas. While this research holds the possibility of producing major social benefits, it may also involve manipulating populations, often without consent, sometimes with...
Blog
– Experimental and Non-experimental Approaches
24 September 2013 Rachel M. Gisselquist and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa UNU-WIDER's ReCom programme is centred around four core questions: what works, what could work, what is scalable, and what is transferrable in foreign aid? One of the first challenges in addressing these questions is a methodological...
Working Paper
pdf
– Definitions and Diagrams
The fundamental problem of external validity is not to generalize from one experiment, so much as to experimentally test generalizable theories. That is, theories that explain the systematic variation of causal effects across contexts. Here we show how the graphical language of causal diagrams can...
Working Paper
pdf
In recent years, randomized controlled trials have become increasingly popular in the social sciences. In development economics in particular, their use has attracted considerable debate in relation to the identification of ‘what works’ in development policy. This paper focuses on a core topic in...
Research Brief
pdf
– Crucial for the Spread of Social Protection Programmes
Evaluations of social protection programmes have been much more comprehensive in Latin America than in sub-Saharan Africa. Monitoring and evaluation protocols are crucial to facilitate improvements in government effectiveness. Anti-poverty transfer schemes seem to be subjected to more evaluation...
Working Paper
pdf
– Opportunities and Challenges
‘Ancillary experiments’ are a new technique whereby researchers use a completed experiment conducted by others to recover causal estimates of a randomized intervention on new outcomes. The method requires pairing new outcome data with randomized treatments the researchers themselves did not oversee...
Working Paper
pdf
– Towards Experiments?
In examining the study of government performance, this paper asks whether field experiments can improve the explanatory precision of results generated by public opinion surveys. Survey research on basic health and education services sub-Saharan Africa shows that the perceived ‘user friendliness’ (or...
Working Paper
pdf
– Experimental and Non-Experimental Methods in Development Economics
This paper provides a survey of six widely used non-experimental methods for estimating the impact of programmes in the context of developing economies (instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, direct matching, propensity score matching, linear regression and non-parametric methods, and...
Working Paper
pdf
– Better Policies? Better Politics?
The paper provides a comparative analysis of the incidence of evaluation methods in antipoverty transfer programmes in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. The paper identifies two broad explanations for the incidence of evaluation in antipoverty transfer programmes in developing countries, one...
Blog
Rachel M. Gisselquist and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa Over the past decade, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have become a staple of research in development economics. Proponents of RCTs have advocated for their use as the best means of identifying ‘what works’ in development, while sceptics voice strong...
Journal Article
– A Comparative Perspective to the Asian Giants
Part of Journal Special Issue
Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Journal Article
– Brazil and the CIBS in a Comparative Perspective
Part of Journal Special Issue
Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Journal Article
– China and India
Part of Journal Special Issue
Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Journal Article
Part of Journal Special Issue
Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Journal Article
– Evidence from Brazil, China, India and South Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue
Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Journal Article
Part of Journal Special Issue
Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Journal Article
Part of Journal Special Issue
Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Journal Article
– Introduction
Part of Journal Special Issue
Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Fast-growing developing countries have emerged as an important destination and source of trade, investments and technology. Furthermore, trade between developing countries has grown rapidly over the last decades, and is becoming more diversified, where exchange includes from primary commodities to...
– Impacts, Prospects and Implications
The rise of China and India is rapidly reshaping the world economy, with far-reaching implication for every national and regional government, business community, and individual citizen. Arising from the UNU-WIDER research project 'Southern Engines of Global growth', this volume explores the...
Policy Brief
pdf
– China, India, Brazil and South Africa
This Policy Brief focuses on links between the developing countries of Brazil, India, China and South Africa and the global economy, with a special emphasis on the implications of China’s spectacular growth on developing economies and the rest of the world. The issues considered include changing...
Journal Article
– A Disaggregated Analysis
The paper analyses export productivity and trade specialisation in China, Brazil, India and South Africa. The investigation calculates a time-varying export productivity measure using highly disaggregated product categories. The modelling shows that export productivity is determined by real income...
Working Paper
pdf
– The Case of Latin American Countries
Foreign bank presence has substantially increased in Latin America during the second half of the 1990s, which has prompted an intense debate on its banking and macroeconomic consequences. In this paper, we apply ARCH techniques to jointly estimate the impact of foreign bank presence on the level and...
Displaying 32 of 128 results