Teaching

The course surveys applied microeconomic tools for policy analysis through a cost–benefit lens, covering randomized and nonrandomized evaluations. It emphasizes evaluation design and implementation, including needs assessment, process evaluation, and rigorous cost–benefit analysis (CBA). CBA is defined as selecting the option that makes society best off, with economic efficiency as the principal criterion. While a naïve decision rule would pick the project with the greatest dollar-valued net benefits, effective CBA must address several complications: balancing economic efficiency with broader notions of social welfare; deciding which groups to include and how to weight their outcomes; expressing impacts accurately in real or constant dollars; and aligning the timing of analysis with project implementation while accounting for political pressures that may shape results. By the end, students will be able to design credible evaluations, interpret evidence from experiments and quasi-experiments, and apply CBA to compare policy alternatives in a transparent, disciplined manner thoughtfully.