Statistical Tools for Program Evaluation: Methods and Applications to Economic Policy, Public Health, and Education

This book provides a self-contained presentation of the statistical tools required for evaluating public programs, as advocated by many governments, the World Bank, the European Union, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. After introducing the methodological framework of program evaluation, the first chapters are devoted to the collection, elementary description and multivariate analysis of data as well as the estimation of welfare changes. The book then successively presents the tools of ex-ante methods (financial analysis, budget planning, cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness and multi-criteria evaluation) and ex-post methods (benchmarking, experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation). The step-by-step approach and the systematic use of numerical illustrations equip readers to handle the statistics of program evaluation.

It not only offers practitioners from public administrations, consultancy firms and nongovernmental organizations the basic tools and advanced techniques used in program assessment, it is also suitable for executive management training, upper undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as for self-study.

Jean-Michel JOSSELIN is professor of economics at the University of Rennes 1 (France). His research and teaching interests include law and economics, public policy evaluation, with a focus on public health (cost effectiveness analysis, decision analytic modelling in oncology and chronic diseases). He is researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CREM-CNRS and Condorcet Center for Political Economy), affiliated with the health research chair Hospinnomics (AP-HP and Paris School of Economics), member since 2012 of the Health Economics and Public Health Committee (CEESP) of the French National Authority for Health (HAS).

Benoît Le Maux is associate professor of economics at the University of Rennes 1 (France). His research and teaching relate to public policy evaluation and democracy, with a special emphasis on public expenditures (microeconomic analysis of collective decision-making, econometrics, quasi-experimental techniques). He is researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CREM-CNRS and Condorcet Center for Political Economy) and currently in charge of coordinating a master program in public finance and management at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Rennes 1.