COURSE NUMBER: MBA296.2

COURSE TITLE: Applied Impact Evaluation

UNITS OF CREDIT: 2 units

INSTRUCTOR: Paul Gertler

E-MAIL ADDRESS: gertler@haas.berkeley.edu

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Wednesday, 4:00 – 6:00PM

PREREQUISITE(S): Core

CLASS FORMAT: Mixture of lectures and cases

REQUIRED READINGS: Textbook that can be downloaded from web plus readings that can be downloaded from journals and web

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Midterm, final group project, 3 short homework assignments and participation

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

Business strategies and public policies are intended to change outcomes such as raising incomes, increasing productivity, improving learning, or reducing illness. Whether or not these changes in outcomes are actually achieved are crucial public policy and business questions, yet are not often examined. This course covers the methods and applications of impact evaluations, which is the science of measuring the causal impact of a strategy, program or policy. Applications are drawn from wide range developing and developed country settings.

Simply put, an impact evaluation assesses the changes in the well-being of individuals, businesses or organizations that can be attributed to a particular project, program or policy. This focus on attribution is the hallmark of impact evaluations. This basic question incorporates an important causal dimension: we are only interested in the impact of the program, this is the effect on outcomes that is caused directly by the program. In other words, we are looking for the changes in outcome that are directly attributable to the program. Correspondingly, the central challenge in carrying out effective impact evaluations is to identify the causal relationship between the strategy or policy and the outcomes of interest.

This course will cover the range of methods used in impact evaluation and survey what works in a wide variety of public policy and business strategy areas using case studies from both developing and developed countries.

Impact evaluation is about generating evidence on which policies and strategies work and which don’t. This course should appeal to three main audiences: (1) those who want careers in decision-making positions, such as policy makers and business leaders and need to be able to understand and evaluate the available evidence and forecasts to make informed evidence-based decisions, (2) those who want to be project managers, development practitioners and business managers who commission impact evaluations, and (3) those who want to actually design and implement impact evaluations.