Students of Microeconomics design a “Dream Experiment” for Social Good
Last semester, we offered a new elective, Microeconomics of Development, to Data Science, Economics and Business (DSEB) majors. Within this course, one of the assignments asked teams (of 4 students each) to design a “Dream Experiment” for social good. The goal was to propose an idea that promotes active learning through application of classroom concepts, while using a real-world situation from India with policy implications.
At the undergraduate level, typical development economics textbooks summarize growth models and explain patterns using survey data from developing countries. They focus on theory as well as empirics, but overlook the paradigm of randomized experiments that are popular in development for social change. Randomized controlled experiments have become the gold standard for understanding causal effects of policy changes and interventions such as conditional cash transfers to families in Mexico, deworming in Kenya, incentivizing teachers to come to school, or performance pay to teachers in India based on students’ grades. These experiments compel one to think how “nudges” in policies can make a difference, particularly how small institutional changes to information and incentives in a local environment lead to changes in behavior and outcomes.
To address this lacuna in development economics teaching, the goal of this project was to make students aware of the design and construction of a real-world experiment (along with the econometrics that goes into the design and measurement).
The final “Dream Experiment” research proposals by student teams at Plaksha included ideas on reducing gender gap in STEM education, improving access to education for economically underprivileged people, and measuring the impact of a pan-India health insurance scheme offered by the Government. The skills that were evaluated in the dream experiment included originality, feasibility, policy implications, using technical concepts from class, presentation clarity, answering questions during presentation by jury made up of five faculty members, and the overall quality of the paper.
The winning team worked with the Admissions team at Plaksha to design a new treatment on how to attract more female students in applying for admission into Plaksha. This group assignment helped foster a sense of using science for social good in the real world and gave vent to students’ originality by extending the econometrics taught in class. I hope we can witness the fruits of their efforts in the months ahead!
Dr. Prakarsh Singh (writer) is the Chair Professor, Economics at Plaksha University and former Senior Economist from Amazon.
