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Real Chaos, Today – Randomised controlled trials in economics

Are Randomized Controlled Trials a good way to do economics?

One study in particular, about Argentina’s mandatory military service in pretty much all of the 20th century, finds that being conscripted raises the crime rate relative to people who didn’t get drafted through the lottery. A final, major issue is attrition - whether or not all people who are in the “treated” group actually do receive treatment, which is not always discusse d. Fundamentally, the problem for RCTs is that context seems to matter a lot, even when the heterogeneity of impacts (pertaining to internal validity) can be accounted for. Based on their belonging to underrepresented groups (women, people of color, LGBT+), the rank of their academic institution of origin, and nationality, the authors were sorted according to the field their PhD advisors were in, and matched to another economist in the “booster” set.

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