Rigorous Empirical Research in Development Economics

The conference covers recent developments in rigorous empirical research methods and applications in development economics. Rigorous impact evaluations of policy reforms gained increasing importance in the recent fifteen years with a conspicuous increase in RCTs as well as other rigorous evaluation methods, particularly in the field of development economics, where large-scale RCTs are nowadays very common. This development also led to a closer interaction between theory, empirical research and primary data collection, with new econometric methods being developed and tested, which are often tailored to rigorous impact evaluations. The conference targets applied development economists who apply and use impact evaluation methods as well as applied econometricians with an interest in impact evaluation.

The research conference will gather leading researchers in econometric impact evaluations for scientific discourse on methods and evaluations.