Join us on 10 November at 16:00 as François Roubaud and Isabelle Guérin join the WIDER Webinar Series. During this special 75 minute session they will launch their new book on the role of randomized control trials (RCT) in development.

Full details on the event page: https://www.wider.unu.edu/event/fran%C3%A7ois-roubaud-and-isabelle-gu%C3%A9rin-covid-19-and-role-rcts-development

COVID-19 and the role of RCTs in development

In October 2019, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer jointly won the 51st Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.” But what is the exact scope of their experimental method, known as randomized control trials (RCTs)? Which sorts of questions are RCTs able to address and which do they fail to answer? The edited volume Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development: A Critical Perspective, just published, provides answers to these questions. The book explains how RCTs work, what they can achieve, why they sometimes fail, how they can be improved and why other methods are both useful and necessary.

The book includes contributions from specialists with a range of backgrounds and disciplines, including two other winners of the Nobel Economics Prize.

In short, and even though the book gives voice to contrasting opinions, it shows that the potential of RCTs is much more limited than imagined, generates various perverse effects, and raises fundamental ethical questions. The COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity to test these conclusions, and question the use but also the limitations of the method.

Gulzar Natarajan and Rachel M. Gisselquist will join the session as discussants. Rachel Gisselquist will be sharing insights from a recent Journal Article on the potential of trials in measuring government performance.

Register here

For more details please contact richardson@wider.unu.edu

Ruby Richardson Communications Assistant United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research Phone +358 (0)9 615 99257  Email richardson@wider.unu.edu Web wider.unu.edu Katajanokanlaituri 6 B, FI-00160 Helsinki, Finland