COURSE
NUMBER: MBA296.5
COURSE
TITLE: Applied Impact Evaluation
UNITS
OF CREDIT: 2 units
INSTRUCTOR:
Paul Gertler
E-MAIL
ADDRESS: gertler@haas.berkeley.edu
MEETING
DAY(S)/TIME: Mondays, 2:00 – 4:00PM
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.