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For a diverse country like India, the results of randomized control trials (RCTs) may be common for some procedures and may be different for some regions and the experiment should be conducted in multiple locations to make a better analysis and then to see differences between states, economist and Nobel laureate Michael R. Kremer said Wednesday. “For some things there may be very common procedures in terms of the results of randomized trials, for some other things that may be very different. There may be systematic preferences for some regions…the idea is to experiment across multiple sites and then do a better analysis and see the differences across sites,” he said.
Kremer spoke after delivering the TN Srinivasan Memorial Lecture at the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER). Kremer along with economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo were awarded the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. They worked with RCTs to understand the impact of different policy initiatives/interventions to find the impact or outcome. Such as whether providing a mobile vaccination van and/or grain sack will encourage villagers to vaccinate their children and then in RCT village households will be divided into groups, study its various aspects, conduct various experiments and based on such evidence, decide what needs to be done.
“…whether it’s a country, whether it’s a city or a particular university faculty, if someone is going to try a new approach, carefully document the impact of it… I think there needs to be support at a central level to encourage this type of experimentation and documentation,” he said. He said governments are often ready to respond to evidence, but don’t always have the staff or units dedicated to experimentation and iteration. Citing government/researcher/non-profit collaborations in digital agriculture, Kremer noted the use of IFFCO-Kisan’s mobile phone advisory service by 3.5 million farmers in 19 states.
He also talked about improving the quality of drinking water, saying that 70 percent of households in rural areas do not purify water before drinking. “Many people are still using untreated groundwater. Re-contamination of treated water happens due to leaks, low pressure in the pipes,” he said.
He proposed the use of inline chlorination at a low dose without taste as a cheap and effective way to improve water quality. Citing the example of Bangladesh, he said a randomized evaluation there suggested a 25 percent reduction in childhood diarrhea.
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