Assignment Procedure Biases in Randomised Policy Experiments

TY - JOUR

T1 - Assignment Procedure Biases in Randomised Policy Experiments

AU - Aldashev, Gani

AU - Kirchsteiger, Georg

AU - Sebald, Alexander

PY - 2017/6/1

Y1 - 2017/6/1

N2 - Randomised controlled trials (RCT) have gained ground as the dominant tool for studying policy interventions in many fields of applied economics. We analyse theoretically encouragement and resentful demoralisation in RCTs and show that these might be rooted in the same behavioural trait – people's propensity to act reciprocally. When people are motivated by reciprocity, the choice of assignment procedure influences the RCTs’ findings. We show that even credible and explicit randomisation procedures do not guarantee an unbiased prediction of the impact of policy interventions; however, they minimise any bias relative to other less transparent assignment procedures.

AB - Randomised controlled trials (RCT) have gained ground as the dominant tool for studying policy interventions in many fields of applied economics. We analyse theoretically encouragement and resentful demoralisation in RCTs and show that these might be rooted in the same behavioural trait – people's propensity to act reciprocally. When people are motivated by reciprocity, the choice of assignment procedure influences the RCTs’ findings. We show that even credible and explicit randomisation procedures do not guarantee an unbiased prediction of the impact of policy interventions; however, they minimise any bias relative to other less transparent assignment procedures.

U2 - 10.1111/ecoj.12321

DO - 10.1111/ecoj.12321

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:84994149392

SN - 0013-0133

VL - 127

SP - 873

EP - 895

JO - The Economic Journal

JF - The Economic Journal

IS - 602

ER -