A Tale of Two Programs: Assessing Treatment and Control in NREGA Studies
重新审视全球最大公共就业项目NREGA的影响评估，发现忽略其前身SGRY会导致低估NREGA对多种社会经济结果的总体均衡影响约30-40%。
Abstract This article revisits impact evaluation studies on the largest public workfare in the world, NREGA. In an environment where randomization is not feasible, I show why an impact evaluation exercise on NREGA should acknowledge the existence of an older program, SGRY. Using novel district-level expenditure data on SGRY, this article shows how ignoring the older program is likely to underestimate the general equilibrium impact of the employment policy on various relevant socioeconomic outcomes. In most cases, ignoring SGRY underestimates NREGA’s impact by 30–40 percent.