We are pleased to announce the REECAP meeting 2025 from June 2nd to June 5th at iDiv in Leipzig, Germany.
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Our objectives
Our Mission: To bring together researchers, evaluators and policy makers interested in the use of economic experimental approaches for more evidence-based policy design and evaluation.
Doing so, REECAP wishes to contribute to the improvement of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
Improving external and internal validity of economic and behavioral experimental research to make it an essential component of CAP evaluation toolbox
Create bridges across evaluation communities and knowledge exchanges with policy makers in order to upgrade the impact of our research
Provide relevant and timely information to REECAP network members and disseminate REECAP results to relevant stakeholders
Why economic experiments ?
The CAP toolbox for ex-ante policy assessment and ex-post evaluation studies includes mostly farm and market simulation models, statistical and econometric analysis of survey data, and descriptive case studies. Yet, the EU agricultural policy has changed considerably, requiring adaptations of CAP evaluation toolbox.
Policy-makers require more evidence-based policy recommendations. They pay more attention to cause-effect relationships of policies and to the additionality of their effects.
Economic experiments are at the forefront of these recent methodological developments. By economic experiments, we mean discrete choice experiments (DCEs), laboratory experiments, field experiments and randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Their main common feature is to rely on data that are generated in a controlled setting, with a randomized assignment of participants to treatment and control groups. In contrast to “naturally-occurring” observational data, experimental data are obtained through a rigorous experimental protocol. This allows for a clearer identification of impact and causality and results which are potentially replicable in different contexts or with different types of participants.
Experiments developped by REECAP members are:
helping to design well-adjusted and effective policy interventions based on behavioural insights and on outcomes of pilot studies mobilizing experimental approaches (ex-ante evaluation)
providing robust results on the policies’ net impact (ex-post evaluation)
Work program
Working Group #1: METHODS
Objective: Improving external and internal validity of economic and behavioral experimental research to make it an essential component of CAP evaluation toolbox
Members: Chloé McCallum (ETH, Switzerland), Julian Sagebiel (iDiv, Germany), Alexandre Sauquet (INRAE, France), Henning Schaak (BOKU, Austria), Adrian Vargas-Lopez (Leibniz University Hannover, Germany), Katarzyna Zagórska (Warsaw University, Poland)
Working Group #2: IMPACT
Objective: Create bridges across evaluation communities and knowledge exchanges with policy makers in order to upgrade the impact of our research
Members: Jesus Barreiro-Hurlé (Joint Research Center, Spain), Mirta Casati (UNICATT, Italy), Maria Espinosa-Goded (Seville University, Spain), Marianne Lefebvre (Angers University, France), Kristin Limbach (KIT, Germany), Antje Risius (Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany), Macario Rodriguez-Entrena (Córdoba University, Spain), Christoph Schulze (ZALF, Germany)
Working Group #3: OUTREACH
Objective: Provide relevant and timely information to REECAP network members and disseminate REECAP results to relevant stakeholders
Members: Laure Kuhfuss (James Hutton Institute, UK), Tanja Šumrada (Ljubljana University, Slovenia), Fabian Thomas (Osnabrück University, Germany)
What have we done so far?
REECAP is a EU-wide consortium created in 2017. REECAP is open to those who wish to promote behavioural analysis and economic experimental designs for the ex-ante and ex-post evaluation of European agricultural policies.
Network among researchers:
Information platform listing EU researchers contributing to REECAP objectives, currently gathering around researchers and evaluation experts from most EU countries.
Organisation of annual workshops, including panel discussions with policymakers, training sessions on methodological issues, presentations of on-going projects and experimental results by REECAP members.
Networking with the US equivalent network: CBEAR
Coordination of the replication of experiments informing agricultural policies
Advocacy on the use of experimental approaches for CAP evaluation targeted at policy makers:
European institutions (DG Agriculture, DG Climate, Joint Research Centre)
National ministries of agriculture
Local program administrators and evaluators (water agencies, agricultural chambers…)
Civil society & private sector organizations (environmental NGOs, farmers’ associations, food retailers, agricultural cooperatives)
Dissemination:
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