Randomized Evaluation in Development

Randomized evaluation applies the logic of the controlled experiment to development policy: an intervention — a school grant, a deworming pill, an insurance product — is assigned at random to some units and withheld from others, so that any subsequent difference in outcomes can be attributed causally to the intervention rather than to confounding. Championed from the early 2000s by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), the approach earned its leading proponents — Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee, and Michael Kremer — the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for transforming how anti-poverty programmes are tested.