How Good Are Ex Ante Program Evaluation Techniques? The Case of School Enrollment in PROGRESA

This paper evaluates a microsimulation technique by comparing the simulated outcome of a program with its actual effect. The ex ante evaluation is carried out for a conditional cash transfer program, where poor households were given money if the children attended school. A model of occupational choi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Bornhorst, Fabian
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. International Monetary Fund 2009
Series:IMF Working Papers
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: International Monetary Fund - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
Description
Summary:This paper evaluates a microsimulation technique by comparing the simulated outcome of a program with its actual effect. The ex ante evaluation is carried out for a conditional cash transfer program, where poor households were given money if the children attended school. A model of occupational choice is used to simulate the expected impact of the program. The results suggest that the transfer would indeed increase school attendance and do more so among girls than boys. While the simulated effect tends to be larger than the actual effect, the latter lies within bootstrapped confidence intervals of the simulation
Physical Description:35 pages
ISBN:9781451873344