UNSW Business School BIBaP

Eva Vivalt

How much can we generalize from impact evaluations?

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Time

02/04/2019 - 12:00 - 13:00

Address

Room 464, UNSW Business School, UNSW

Description

  • April 02, 2019
  • Speaker: Eva Vivalt
  • Topic: How Much Can We Generalize From Impact Evaluations?

Abstract

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 NGO-implemented programs, even controlling for sample size. I show that treatment effect heterogeneity can be appreciably reduced by taking study characteristics into account.