Program Evaluation

Spring 2010

 

Instructor:

Gabor Kezdi

kezdig@ceu.hu

Office: 814, Economics Department

Office hours: TBA

 

syllabus

 

Gabor’s presentations

 

Student presentations

 

Problem Sets

 

 

Due date

PS_1

 

 

PS_2

 

 

PS_3

 

 

PS_4

 

 

dataset:

 

Student presentation schedule

Date

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAIN TEXT

Imbens, G. W. and J. M. Wooldridge (2009), “Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation.” Journal of Economic Literature, 47:1, 5–86

 

ADDITIONAL READINGS

general readings

Ashenfelter, Orley (1978): “Estimating the effect of training programs on earnings,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 6(1): 47-57.

LaLonde, Robert J. (1986): “Evaluating the econometric evaluations of training programs with experimental data.” American Economic Review, 76(4): 604-620.

Smith (2000) “A Critical Survey of Empirical Methods for Evaluating Active Labor Market Policies.” Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics. 136(3): 1-22.

Smith, Jeffrey. 2000. “Evaluating Active Labour Market Policies: Lessons from North America.”

Blundell, Richard and Monica Costa Dias (2002): “Alternative approaches to evaluation in empirical microeconomics,” cemmap Working Paper CWP10/02.

Heckman, James and Jeffrey Smith. 2004. “The Determinants of Participation in a Social Program: Evidence from a Prototypical Job Training Program.” Journal of Labor Economics. 22(4): 243-298.

Deaton (2009): Instruments of Development. Randomization in the tropics, and the search for the elusive keys to economic development

 

randomized experiments

Banerjee and Duflo: The Experimental Approach to Development Economics

Control Freacks – A short article by The Economist (June 12, 2008)

Skoufias (2005): PROGRESA and Its Impacts on the Welfare of Rural Households in Mexico. Research Report 139, IFPRI.

Bertrand, M and Mullainathan, S. (2003): “Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination.” NBER WP 9873.

 

regressiond discontinuity design

Hahn, Todd, and Van der Klaauw (2001): “Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design,” Econometrica, 69(1): 201-209.

Angrist and Lavy (1999): “Using Maimonedes' Rule to Estimate the Effect of Class Size on Scholastic Achievement,” QJE 114(2), 533-575

Black, Galdo and Smith (2005): “Estimating the Selection Bias of the Regression-Discontinuity Design Using a Tie-Breaking Experiment,” Working Paper

 

propensity score and matching

Dehejia and Wahba (2002): “Propensity score matching methods for non-experimental causal studies,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 84(1): 151–161.

and the debate they stirred:

Smith and Todd: Does Matching Overcome Lalonde’s Critique of Nonexperimental Estimators?

Dehejia (2005): Practical propensity score matching: a reply to Smith and Todd (Journal of Econometrics, 125; 355-364)

Smith and Todd: Rejoinder

Dehejia: Re-Rejoinder

 

effect mechanisms

Ham, John C. and Robert J. LaLonde (1996): “The effect of sample selection and initial conditions in duration models: Evidence from experimental data on training.” Econometrica, 64(1): 175-205.

Lee, David S. (2008), “Training, Wages, and Sample Selection: Estimating Sharp Bounds on Treatment Effects.” Working Paper

 

some interesting applications

Black, Smith, Berger and Noel: “Is the Threat of Reemployment Services More Effective than the Services Themselves? Evidence from Random Assignment in the UI System” American Economic Review. 93(4): 1313-1327. 

Blundell, Costa Dias, Meghir and Van Reenen (2004): “Evaluating the employment impact of a mandatory job serach program,” Journal fo the European Economic Association, 2(4): 569-606.

Albrecht, van den Berg, and Vroman,  “The knowledge lift: The Swedish adult education program that aimed to eliminate low worker skill levels.” IFAU Working Paper, 2004: 17.

Suranyi and Kezdi (2009): A Successful School Integration Program. An Evaluation of the Hungarian National School Integration Program, 2005-7. Roma Education Fund.

 

ONLINE RESOURCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_evaluation

http://www.evaluationwiki.org/index.php/Main_Page

Many more online resources are available from http://www.evaluationwiki.org/index.php/Public_Domain_Evaluation_Resources

The User-Friendly Handbook for Project Evaluation. National Science Foundation, 2002

JPAL: The Abdul Latef Jameel Poverty Action Lab at M.I.T.

http://www.programevaluation.org/

http://www.eval.org/

http://www.evaluationcanada.ca/site.cgi?s=1

http://www.ngoms.org/monitoringandevaluation.htm

IFS – A British policy research institute in relation to UCL. http://www.ifs.org.uk/,

IFAU – A Swedish institute for labor market policy evaluation. http://www.ifau.se/?epslanguage=EN 

Evidence Network – A British network on policy research. http://evidencenetwork.org/Mission.html

IZA Labor Policy – Policy resarch branch of a labor economics research institute. http://www.iza.org/ 

Melbourne CPE – An Australian research group on education policy. http://www.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/EPM/CPE/

Melbourne  Institute of Applied Econmic and Social Research. http://melbourneinstitute.com/labour/