KRAMARZ Francis

Centre for research in economics and statistics, INSEE (French institute for statistics and economic studies)

Experimentations and quasi-experimentations as government sciences

I’ll draw upon two evaluations of public policies in the field of education to present the principles behind the two approaches. The first case “apprenticeship support programme” is based on randomised evaluation. The experimentation is designed to evaluate a support programme towards lower secondary school students who wish to start apprenticeship. This programme aims to help them land a contract (step 1), then help them settle the various (relational, financial, housing) problems likely to arise (step 2). We have tentative findings on step 1 (work performed by R. Coppoletta, B. Crépon, M. Gurgand, T. Le Barbanchon, R. Rathelot, P. Zamora). The second case is based on non-experimental techniques to identify the effects of teacher education and class size on student outcomes (work performed by Bressoux, Kramarz, and Prost). In each case, the principle of identification will be brought to the fore and debated.