Econometric methods for causal evaluation of education policies and practices: a non‐technical guide
By Martin Schlotter, Guido Schwerdt, Ludger Woessmann. Social Science Research Network, 2011
126 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Education policy‐makers and practitioners want to know which policies and practices can best achieve their goals. But research that can inform evidence‐based policy often requires complex methods to distinguish causation from accidental association. Avoiding econometric jargon and technical detail, this paper explains the main idea and intuition of leading empirical strategies devised to identify causal impacts and illustrates their use with real‐world examples. It covers six evaluation methods: controlled experiments, lotteries of oversubscribed programs, instrumental variables, regression discontinuities, differences‐in‐differences approach, and panel data techniques. Illustrating applications include evaluations of early childhood interventions, voucher lotteries, funding programs for disadvantaged students, and compulsory school and tracking reforms.
Subfields: Education, Safety Research
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1c193e9ad799fa4c5cda6255d7ca52d1138c1db7
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In Education
- Ricarda Schmidl
- Chad R. Lykins
- Ora W. Y. Kwo
- Núria Rodríguez-Planas
- Dan Wang
- Werner Eichhorst
- Shengli Zhan
- M. Bray
In Safety Research
Citations in the corpus
- A Roadmap to Vocational Education and Training Systems Around the World (2013, background): “However, causal interpretation of the results remains questionable, with many factors remaining unobserved in the selection process, including norms of peers and the neighborhood, and teachers’ ability (Schlotter et al. 2011). Recent causal estimates for Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany do not f”
- The effectiveness of private tutoring: students’ perceptions in comparison with mainstream schooling in Hong Kong (2013, background): “Causal relationships are commonly used for education policy evaluation analysis when some intervention activity at policy level is used to influence or change individual decision-making and actions (Khandker et al. 2010; Schlotter et al. 2011).”