Welcome to Episode 6 at Chayakkada Chats. Today, we will speak about the use of randomised control trials or RCTs in economics. In 2019, the Nobel Committee awarded the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019” to three economists – Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer – for their contributions to the experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. For a while prior to this award, and most certainly afterwards, there have been many debates on whether the RCTs have made a deserving contribution to the field of development economics, and specifically poverty alleviation. While its proponents celebrate the award, serious questions have been raised on whether RCTs are statistically valid, whether they have heralded, as is claimed, a credibility revolution in economics, whether ethics are violated in the practise of RCTs and whether they have made any meaningful contribution to the understanding of poverty around us.

Our guest for today is Dr Sanjay Reddy. Sanjay Reddy was an early critic of RCTs as a method; he wrote an article in the journal Review of Agrarian Studies, in 2013, titled “Randomise This!”. Dr Reddy has a

PhD in Economics from the Harvard University.

He is an Associate Professor of Economics at The New School for Social Research in New York.