IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ausecr/v56y2023i4p431-441.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluating Policy Impact: Working Out What Works

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Leigh

Abstract

Randomised trials frequently produce surprising findings, overturning conventional wisdom. During the twentieth century, randomised trials became commonplace within medicine, saving millions of lives. Randomised trials within government can now be conducted more cheaply, using administrative data. Just as it might be considered unethical to conduct a randomised trial if a program is indisputably effective, it might be considered unethical not to conduct a rigorous evaluation if a program lacks evidence. Developed within a robust ethical framework, and alongside community consultation, better evaluation can help governments save money and address social disadvantage.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Leigh, 2023. "Evaluating Policy Impact: Working Out What Works," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 56(4), pages 431-441, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ausecr:v:56:y:2023:i:4:p:431-441
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-8462.12530
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.12530
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1467-8462.12530?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniele Fanelli, 2009. "How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(5), pages 1-11, May.
    2. Anthony Petrosino & Carolyn Turpin‐Petrosino & Meghan E. Hollis‐Peel & Julia G. Lavenberg, 2013. "Scared Straight and Other Juvenile Awareness Programs for Preventing Juvenile Delinquency: A Systematic Review," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 9(1), pages 1-55.
    3. Stefano DellaVigna & Elizabeth Linos, 2022. "RCTs to Scale: Comprehensive Evidence From Two Nudge Units," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(1), pages 81-116, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Love, Peter E.D. & Ika, Lavagnon A. & Ahiaga-Dagbui, Dominic D., 2019. "On de-bunking ‘fake news’ in a post truth era: Why does the Planning Fallacy explanation for cost overruns fall short?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 397-408.
    2. Jeremy Hall & Ben R. Martin, 2019. "Towards a Taxonomy of Academic Misconduct: The Case of Business School Research," SPRU Working Paper Series 2019-02, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    3. Christina Gravert, 2024. "From Intent to Inertia: Experimental Evidence from the Retail Electricity Market," CESifo Working Paper Series 11139, CESifo.
    4. Robert J Warren II & Joshua R King & Charlene Tarsa & Brian Haas & Jeremy Henderson, 2017. "A systematic review of context bias in invasion biology," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-12, August.
    5. Jasper Brinkerink, 2023. "When Shooting for the Stars Becomes Aiming for Asterisks: P-Hacking in Family Business Research," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 47(2), pages 304-343, March.
    6. Frederique Bordignon, 2020. "Self-correction of science: a comparative study of negative citations and post-publication peer review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1225-1239, August.
    7. Hensel, Przemysław G., 2019. "Supporting replication research in management journals: Qualitative analysis of editorials published between 1970 and 2015," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 45-57.
    8. Lars Behlen & Oliver Himmler & Robert Jäckle, 2023. "Defaults and effortful tasks," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(5), pages 1022-1059, November.
    9. Necker, Sarah, 2014. "Scientific misbehavior in economics," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(10), pages 1747-1759.
    10. Gee, Laura K. & Kiyawat, Anoushka & Meer, Jonathan & Schreck, Michael J., 2024. "Pivotal or popular: The effects of social information and feeling pivotal on civic actions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 219(C), pages 404-413.
    11. Despoina Alempaki & Genyue Fu & Jingcheng Fu, 2021. "Lying and social norms: a lab-in-the-field experiment with children," Discussion Papers 2021-01, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    12. Houdek, Petr, 2024. "Nudging in organizations: How to avoid behavioral interventions being just a façade," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    13. Brodeur, Abel & Cook, Nikolai & Heyes, Anthony, 2022. "We Need to Talk about Mechanical Turk: What 22,989 Hypothesis Tests Tell us about p-Hacking and Publication Bias in Online Experiments," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1157, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    14. Gary Charness & David Masclet & Marie Claire Villeval, 2014. "The Dark Side of Competition for Status," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(1), pages 38-55, January.
    15. David Spiegelhalter, 2017. "Trust in numbers," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 180(4), pages 948-965, October.
    16. Abel Brodeur & Scott Carrell & David Figlio & Lester Lusher, 2023. "Unpacking P-hacking and Publication Bias," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(11), pages 2974-3002, November.
    17. Horbach, S.P.J.M.(Serge) & Halffman, W.(Willem), 2019. "The extent and causes of academic text recycling or ‘self-plagiarism’," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 492-502.
    18. Hagmann, David & Liao, Yi-tsen & Chater, Nick & Loewenstein, George, 2023. "Costly Distractions: Focusing on Individual Behavior Undermines Support for Systemic Reforms," OSF Preprints z2vwb_v1, Center for Open Science.
    19. Azevedo, Eduardo M. & Mao, David & Montiel Olea, José Luis & Velez, Amilcar, 2023. "The A/B testing problem with Gaussian priors," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    20. Luigi Butera & Philip Grossman & Daniel Houser & John List & Marie-Claire Villeval, 2020. "A New Mechanism to Alleviate the Crises of Confidence in Science - With an Application to the Public Goods Game," Artefactual Field Experiments 00684, The Field Experiments Website.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ausecr:v:56:y:2023:i:4:p:431-441. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mimelau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.