Evidence for Policy Design

Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) at the Center for International Development at Harvard University is a research program that promotes the use of rigorous evidence to inform the design of public policies in low-income countries. We engage with governments and local organizations to identify key questions in international development, use economic theory to design policy responses and evaluate these via large field-based experiments. Current research topics at EPoD include governance, education, entrepreneurship, health, agriculture, sustainable development, and access to finance. We are creating a network of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers around these issues in order to understand, inform, and design public policy. We also train current and future leaders to use microeconomic evidence to design policy.

EPoD is led by Harvard Kennedy School faculty, Professors Rohini Pande and Asim Ijaz Khwaja. Other EPoD group members are Professors Rema Hanna, Amitabh Chandra, David Yanagizawa-Drott and Ryan Sheely. EPoD incorporates what was previously known as the Micro-Development Initiative (MDI) and also includes the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab Research Initiative (EFLRI) and Governance Innovations for Sustainable Development.

Policy Impact
EPoD researchers partner with policymakers and practitioners to design interventions and evaluations that can achieve sustainable reform. Researchers at EPoD often test different iterations of an intervention in a pilot so that the government or NGO partner can find the optimal policy design and forecast its impact before scaling up. Explicitly considering the objectives and constraints of policy actors from the outset, EPoD researchers design projects that are relevant and applicable for answering important questions in the policy debate today. This strategy creates avenues for sustained engagement with policymakers through comprehensive, multi-year field projects.

Training and student engagement
As part of the Harvard Kennedy School, EPoD equips students by providing knowledge and training on the use of scientific research to evaluate and design policy. Four new classes by EPoD faculty were launched in 2010, teaching rigorous empirical methods to evaluate policy issues in finance (PED-206), health, development (PED-330); and gender (PED-317y) in low-income countries. Professors Chandra, Khwaja and Pande are also working to develop a course that will train students to use evidence and the tools of microeconomics to evaluate and inform policy through developing case studies based on the faculty’s own research. EPoD has also supported the development of research and evaluation capacity in South Asia by advising on training activities at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) in India and the Center for Economic Research Pakistan (CERP) in Pakistan. In the coming year, EPoD is aiming to develop more training opportunities at Harvard.

Global Collaboration
EPoD works with research institutions across the US and around the globe in a collaborative effort to produce cutting-edge research in this field. Partner institutions include the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) in New Haven, the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP), the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) in India, and the International Growth Centre (IGC) in London. Through CID’s research network, EPoD works closely with scholars across Harvard from the Harvard School of Public Health to the Harvard Economics Department and the Harvard Business School.

To learn more about the Evidence for Policy Design, please contact us at epod@hks.harvard.edu.