HOW MUCH CAN WE GENERALIZE FROM IMPACT EVALUATIONS?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Vivalt, Eva
• 署名单位: Australian National University; University of Toronto
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1093/jeea/jvaa019
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 3045-3089
• 关键词: trials

摘要

Impact evaluations can help to inform policy decisions, but they are rooted in particular contexts and to what extent they generalize is an open question. I exploit a new data set of impact evaluation results and find a large amount of effect heterogeneity. Effect sizes vary systematically with study characteristics, with government-implemented programs having smaller effect sizes than academic or non-governmental organization-implemented programs, even controlling for sample size. I show that treatment effect heterogeneity can be appreciably reduced by taking study characteristics into account.