Journal of Policy Analysis and Management Symposium on
Empirical Strategies in International Development Research
Guest Editors:
Victor A. Menaldo and Aseem Prakash
University of Washington, Seattle
Submission Deadline: July 1, 2013
The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) invites papers for a symposium on
Empirical
Strategies in International Development Research.In the modern era, governmental and
non-governmental actors have increasingly promoted economic development to improve the material
and social well-being of specific groups. These efforts have targeted, inter alia, underprivileged
segments of society such as ethnic minorities and marginalized social classes, women, children,
and farmers. Targeted development of this sort is now a major public policy concern that
preoccupies a broad cross-section of national, regional, and international institutions.
Since the end of World War II, hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested directly by
developed country governments, or indirectly via multilateral institutions, to promote economic
development in the Global South. Private foundations have also become major players in at least
some categories of development aid. Yet, the results of these resource flows have been variable,
at best, and discouraging, at worst. An important reason behind "aid fatigue" is the belief that
resource transfers via foreign aid have insufficiently achieved their goal: to promote economic
development. This has been attributed to a range of factors that include poor choices about
development instruments, the challenging institutional and social contexts in which development
efforts take place and even the shortcomings of aid beneficiaries. Fears of inefficiency, abuse
and fraud abound. Scholars have responded by seeking to empirically assess "what actually works";
alas, their efforts have often! been frustrated by a range of methodological problems that in!
clude establishing causality and reliably estimating the effects of policy inputs.
Encouragingly, however, in the last two decades scholars have pioneered new empirical techniques
to address these problems. These include the use of randomized field experiments and sophisticated
econometric techniques. This JPAM symposium seeks to assess as well as showcase cutting edge
empirical work in this vein. We invite papers that explore how the efficacy of different types of
interventions in different types of institutional and social settings and targeted at different
audiences might be assessed in relation to well specified development objectives. We invite both
original papers as well as papers which coherently weave together extant work. JPAM is the
flagship journal of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management. It typically ranks
among the top public policy journals. While JPAM readership is sophisticated, we would like the
papers to be written in a way that! makes them accessible to wide audiences.
Field experiments are increasingly popular in the field of international development primarily
because of the shortcomings that beset observational research. Experimentalists rightly question
the contributions made by research that uses observational data but does not provide sufficient
information about the nature and magnitude of the bias that may plague the findings. Although
field experiments centered on randomized control treatment (RCT) evaluations have produced several
intriguing findings, they are not a panacea. There is a concern that research has devolved to the
rote administration of program evaluations of less interesting and important questions. Put
another way, a concern over omitted variables may have led us to omit the most important
questions, and focus exclusively on the type of questions in which only a narrow set of variables
can be manipulated by researchers. Furthermore, there are serious concerns voiced! about external
validity that include both the potential inabi! lity to s! cale up findings and the inability to
extrapolate findings from one place to other places. Some researchers lament the fact that random
assignment is ultimately artificial and usually temporary, belying the historical evolution of
political institutions and practices that are organic and more permanent.
Another challenge faced by the field experiment approach to international development is the
search for causal mechanisms to explain the reason behind aggregate relationships. Without a firm
base of contextual knowledge, as well as knowledge about basic correlations between variables that
occur in the real world, it is hard to know what hypotheses to test for via experimentation.
Theories provide mechanisms so that we can better understand why there may be covariance between
randomly assigned variables and outcomes of interest. What are the most promising theoretical
insights about targeted development strategies in the developing world that can inform our
understandi! ng of the mechanisms behind development?
Finally, what are the best practices in terms of research design, sequencing and casual inference?
Some propose that research plans should be submitted and disseminated before any field experiment
is actually run. The logic is that this promotes transparency and prevents data mining. Yet this
policy might rule out an inductive approach in which the experimental design can be adjusted based
on information gleaned in the field during the research process. What is the best way forward? Is
there a compromise between the deductive and inductive ideal types? What can we learn from more
traditional approaches to development that have already negotiated this debate?
Submissions for this special issue should be made through the regular online submission
process for the journal at editorialexpress.com/jpam/. Please indicate with your submission that
you would like your paper to be considered for this special issue. Initial sub! missions for this
symposium will be accepted until July 1, 2013. Profe! ssor Victor A. Menaldo (
vmenaldo@uw.edu)
and Professor Aseem Prakash (
aseem@uw.edu) will serve as guest editors for this symposium along
with JPAM editor-in-chief, Dr. Maureen Pirog. Please direct all your enquiries to the guest
editors.
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Aseem Prakash
Professor, Department of Political Science
Walker Family Professor for the College of Arts and Sciences
39 Gowen Hall, Box 353530
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-3530
aseem@uw.eduhttp://faculty.washington.edu/aseem/http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jWEaD9IAAAAJ&hl=en