Widely advocated as a means to make policy making more integrated, policy assessment remains weakly integrated in practice. But explanations for this shortfall, such as lack of staff training and resources, ignore more fundamental institutional factors. This paper identifies institutional...

The BLU properties of OLS estimators under known assumptions have encouraged the widespread use of OLS multivariate regression analysis in many empirical studies that are based upon a conceptual model of a single explanatory equation. However, such a model may well be an imperfect empirical...

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the introduction of a Writing Center at a university, which aims at improving students’ scientific writing abilities. In order to deal with the presumed limited utility of student feedback surveys for evaluating the effectiveness of educational...

Microsimulation methods and models of labor market decisions have attracted a lot of attention as an approach to the assessment of consequences of family related policies in the area of labor market and fertility. We set these models in the context of relevant demographic theories and present...

Knowledge translation is underpinned by a dynamic and social knowledge exchange process but there are few descriptions of how this unfolds in practice settings. This has hampered attempts to produce realistic and useful models to help policymakers and researchers understand how knowledge...

Increased political enthusiasm for evidence-based policy and action has re-ignited interest in the use of evidence within political and practitioner networks. Theories of evidence-based policy making and practice are being re-considered in an attempt to better understand the processes through...

Ce document de travail explore la façon dont la phase de vérification empirique a pris le dessus sur les autres phases de la recherche en économie du développement. Cette dérive concerne le sujet phare du moment : les institutions, leur mesure, leurs effets et leurs évaluations....

<alinea/> From the early 1990s ?evidence-based medicine? (EBM) was formalized to promote the most judicious use possible of available knowledge by practitioners, the word ?evidence? referring simultaneously to factual evidence, empirical corroboration, and proof. The tenets of EBM spread to other...

Health is one of the main ways of judging effects on humans and is a component of the three overlapping dimensions of sustainable development: environmental, social and economic. Yet, the assessment of health impacts has been neglected as a way of arguing for the importance of policies to foster...