Beyond Experiments in Development Economics: Local Economy-wide Impact Evaluation

This book provides researchers, students, and practitioners with a methodology to evaluate the impacts of a wide diversity of development projects and policies on local economies. Projects and policies often create spillovers within project areas. LEWIE uses simulation methods to quantify these spillovers. It has become a complement to randomized control trials (RCTs), as governments and donors become interested in documenting impacts beyond the treated, comparing the likely impacts of alternative interventions, and designing complementary interventions to influence program and policy impacts. It is also a tool for impact evaluation where RCTs are not feasible.

Chapters 1-4 motivate and present the basics of impact simulation, including how to design a LEWIE model, how to estimate the model, and how to obtain the necessary data. The remaining chapters provide a diversity of interesting real-world applications and extensions of the basic models. The applications include evaluations of the impacts of cash transfers for the poor, ecotourism, global food-price shocks, irrigation projects, migration, and corruption.

Each chapter provide readers with the tools they need to conduct their own local economy-wide impact evaluations. All models and data used in this book are available on-line.

J. Edward Taylor, Professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis,Mateusz J. Filipski, Postdoctoral Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute

J. Edward Taylor is Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Director of the Center on Rural Economies of the Americas and Pacific Rim (REAP) at the University of California, Davis, where he teaches courses on international development economics and econometric methods. He is also co-editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and founder of the alternative textbook initiative, RebelText.org. Taylor has written extensively on the economy-wide impacts of agricultural and development policies and on immigration. He co-authored Village Economies: The Design, Estimation and Use of Villagewide Economic Models (Cambridge University Press) and Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millenium (Oxford University Press). He is listed in Who's Who in Economics and has advised a number of foreign governments and international development agencies on matters related to economic development.


Mateusz J. Filipski is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC, where he is part of the Development Strategy and Governance Division. He is a graduate of the department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis. Before joining IFPRI, he was a consultant for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He has authored or co-authored a number of publications on impact evaluation of rural development programs and policies, and routinely works as a reviewer for the leading journals in the field.