Event

    

Evaluation Strategies for

Action-Oriented Leaders and Policy Makers

Executive Education Course

Friday, April 11, 2014
8:30am - 1:15pm

The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington, DC 20036

Are you a results-focused official whose job it is to help government get significantly better results and use scarce tax dollars wisely? This half-day course is designed to get you up to speed about using program evaluation to drive results. That includes identifying truly successful programs as well as improving the performance of existing programs.

Scarce dollars need to be targeted at programs that can deliver the highest returns. Rigorous evaluations, such as Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) and quasi-experimental methods, deliver the evidence needed to identify those programs. Only by capturing and measuring the full response to a program can we produce an accurate and informative cost-benefit analysis. This course gives an overview of RCTs and quasi-experimental approaches and describes how they can be used to evaluate a wide variety of government programs. Participants will then break into smaller teams and discuss potential evaluation approaches to be used within their agency.

Schedule

8:30-9:00am	Welcome, Introductions and Emerging Issues  in Evaluation	Michael Greenstone & Michele  Jolin
9:00-9:45am	Pitfalls in Program Evaluations	Max Auffhammer (UC Berkeley)
9:45-10:30am	How to Implement Rigorous Evaluations in  Government Programs	Christopher Knittel (MIT)
10:30-11:15am	Break-out session to identify how the federal  government can better embrace rigorous  evaluation approaches	Participants break into smaller  groups/agency teams for  targeted discussion
11:15-12:15pm	Panel Discussion:  Rigorous Evaluation: The Realities of  Implementation and Scale	Michael Greenstone, MIT and  Brookings Institution  Phil Sharp, Resources for the  Future  Dan Cardinali, Communities in  Schools  Monica Curtis, Wisconsin Energy  Conservation Corp.  Nadya Dabby, Dept of Education
12:15-12:30pm	Break to pick up lunch
12:30-1:00pm	Agency teams share resulting action plans
1:00-1:15pm	Closing Remarks and Next Steps	Michael Greenstone & Michele  Jolin

Instructors:

Michael Greenstone, 3M Professor of Environmental Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Faculty Director of The E2e Project, and the Director of the Hamilton Project
Max Auffhammer, Associate Professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, UC Berkeley
Michele Jolin, Managing Partner for America Achieves
Christopher Knittel, William Barton Rogers Professor of Energy Economics in the Sloan School of Management, a Faculty Director of The E2e Project, and the Co-Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

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Supported by a generous grant from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, E2e is a joint initiative of the Energy Institute at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, two recognized leaders in energy research.