October 2019, the 51st Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was awarded to three of the main proponents of Randomized Control Trials (RCTs). Yet there is reason to question the validity and repercussions of the elevation of this design to the so-called “gold standard” for impact evaluation.

Have RCTs really “dramatically improved our ability to fight poverty in practice”? Which sorts of questions are they able to address and which do they fail to answer? Is causal explanation the only way to understand poverty, and do RCTs systematically manage to provide causal explanations? Are RCTs really a gold standard? What are the dangers in their misuse? Is the supremacy of experimentation in development economics, as commended by the Nobel jury, scientifically legitimate and politically desirable?

Bringing together 26 leading specialists in the field (including two Nobel Prize winning economists) from a range of backgrounds and disciplines (economics, econometrics, mathematics, statistics, political economy, socioeconomics, anthropology, philosophy, global health, epidemiology, and medicine), this authoritative book presents a full and coherent picture of the main strengths and weaknesses of RCTs in the field of development - how they work, what they can achieve, why they sometimes fail, how they can be improved, and why other methods are both useful and necessary.

Join us for a discussion (via Zoom) with five representatives of the editors and authors

Thursday, 10 December 2020

9.00-10.30 am EST / 3.00-4.30 pm CET / 4.00-5.30 pm CAT / 11.00 pm-12.30 am SGT

(EST – Eastern Standard Time, CET – Central European Time, CAT – Central Africa Time, SGT – Singapore Standard

Register https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSet8S86z6WM8oYe49_8LBzghmX7DbxR2jHEXmlfXfPnGsDPaA/viewform