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The politics of experimentation : Political competition and randomized controlled trials
Title / Series / Name
Publication Volume
Publication Issue
Pages
Editors
Keywords
Development policy
External validity
Political competition
Randomized controlled trials
Economics and Econometrics
External validity
Political competition
Randomized controlled trials
Economics and Econometrics
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/27622
Abstract
This paper provides an analysis of how political factors affect the incidence of the evaluation of public policies, with a focus on Randomized Control Trial (RCT) experiments in international development. We argue that political environments where incumbents face greater electoral competition and smaller ruling margins are more likely to host RCT experiments. Using various data sources for the incidence of RCTs both at the cross-country level and at the sub-national level in India, we find that RCTs are more likely to occur in politically competitive jurisdictions. We employ fixed effects regressions using various estimators and an instrumental variable strategy that exploits an electoral reform in India which limited the entry of independent candidates and exogenously affected the degree of electoral competition in state-level politics. The effect seems concentrated on RCTs that have the government as a partner, suggesting that political competition has an important demand-side effect on the incidence of RCTs.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2021-03
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.1016/j.jce.2020.09.002