Publication: A Tale of Two Programs: Assessing Treatment and Control in NREGA Studies
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2021-11
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2021-11-04
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This paper revisits impact evaluation studies on the largest public workfare in the world, NREGA. In an environment where randomization is not feasible, I show why an impact evaluation exercise on NREGA should acknowledge the existence of an older program, SGRY. Using novel district-level expenditure data on SGRY, this article shows how ignoring the older program is likely to underestimate the general equilibrium impact of the employment policy on various relevant socio-economic outcomes. In most cases, ignoring SGRY underestimates NREGA’s impact by 30–40 percent.
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“Bahal, Girish. 2021. A Tale of Two Programs: Assessing Treatment and Control in NREGA Studies. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9835. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36486 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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