DATA AND METHODS FOR PUBLIC POLICIES EVALUATION

Course taught in English

1. Knowledge and understanding: This course aims to present the theory and practice of empirical research in public economics with particular emphasis on the assessment of public programs in the market economies. The course will develop analytical knowledge of the main tools of quantitative evaluations which underpin public interventions efficiency and outcomes. Public policy applications include the main programs in welfare (i.e. health, education, and social sector).

2. Applying knowledge and understanding: The knowledge of the main tools for evaluating public programs will enable students to critical assess the programs and reforms in welfare state. Furthermore, the development of analytical skills on the efficiency and the outcomes’ evaluation of the different public policy will allow students to deal with the problems related to public policy design and decision in real-life situations.

3. Making judgements: TThe acquisition of analytical competences concerning the tools of economic evaluation will enable students to autonomously assess the social and economic implications of different public intervention in welfare sector as health, education, social insurance etc.

4. Communication skills: The student will develop communication skills and an appropriate technical language, with special regard to the analysis of the macroeconomic and microeconomic context, concerning program evaluation which are relevant for public decisions, so as to be able to convey technically rigorous information to experts and non-experts. Evaluation of the communication skills, in a concise and/or analytic form, will take place formally during the written exam, leaving the possibility to evaluate students’ communication skills also through interactive interventions during the in-class lectures.

5. Learning skills: Students’ learning skills will be stimulated through a proper interaction and discussion on the general knowledge and skills and on their application to case studies.

Introduction

1. Public program evaluation: introduction and overview

First Part: Ex ante evaluation of public program

1. Financial appraisal
2. Budget impact analysis
3. Cost Benefit Analysis and Cost Effectiveness Analysis

Second part: Ex post Evaluation of public program

1. Benchmarking
2. Randomized controlled experiments
3. Quasi-experiments

The goal of the course is to provide the students with a practical guide that covers the broad array of methods for public policy evaluation. The first part of the course covers the econometrics tools useful for economic evaluation and ex ante evaluation methods. The second part of the course is about ex post evaluation, i.e. the assessment of the effects of a public program strategy after its implementation. The key issue here is to control for all those extra factors that may affect or bias the conclusion of the public program and the assessment of the study. The main topics of this part cover the benchmarking analysis and the experimental approach. In particular, we analyze the different quasi-experimental techniques (difference-in-differences, propensity score matching, regression discontinuity design, and instrumental variables) that can be used when faced with observational data. We rely empirical examples on R-CRAN, a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. The course consists of 20 lectures, each lasting 2 hours.

Main textbook

Josselin, J. M., & Le Maux, B. (2017). Statistical tools for program evaluation: Methods and applications to economic policy, public health, and education. Springer.

Other useful readings:

Athey, S., & Imbens, G. W. (2017). The state of applied econometrics: Causality and policy evaluation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 3-32.

Imbens, G. W., & Rubin, D. B. (2015). Causal inference in statistics, social, and biomedical sciences. Cambridge University Press.

Cerulli, G. (2015). Econometric evaluation of socio-economic programs. Advanced Studies in Theoretical and Applied Econometrics Series, 49. Springer

European Commission. (2013). The resource for the evaluation of socio-economic development.

European Commission. (2014). Guide to cost-benefit analysis of investment projects.

European Commission. (2015). Guidance document on monitoring and evaluation.

World Bank. (2011). Impact evaluation in practice.

Further readings will be provided during the course and made available via the “Studium” course webpage