Announcing 20 scholarships for doctoral students: Field Experiments Summer School (FESS) 2023 : IRMA
The last date to apply for the workshop is 08 June 2023
IRMA was established in 1979 at Anand, Gujarat with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), the Government of India, the Government of Gujarat, erstwhile Indian Dairy Corporation and the National Dairy Development Board to provide management education, training, research and consultancy support to co-operatives and rural development organisations in India. IRMA is founded with the belief, borne out by Dr.Kurien’s work in the dairy co-operatives which revolutionised the dairy industry in the country, that the key for effective rural development is professional management.
Professionalising the management of rural organisations calls for matching the specific but unmet needs of the sector with the formal techniques and skills of management professionals. Linking the two are the ‘rural managers’ prepared by IRMA through its two-years diploma (PRM) in rural management. Born out of a maverick’s dream, IRMA has become a frontrunner in professionalising the development of India’s rural sector. Over the years it has provided management training, support and research facilities to students committed to rural development and in this process it has brought within its ambit several co-operatives, non-government organisations, government development agencies, international development organisations and funding agencies.
Announcing 20 scholarships for doctoral students for the Field Experiments Summer School (FESS) at IRMA!
The Verghese Kurien Policy Lab (VKPL) at IRMA will organize a week-long workshop, termed the Field Experiments Summer School (FESS). The workshop recognizes the increasing importance of field experiments in securing external funding for empirical research. It will cover a range of experimental methods and coding strategies, as well as various experimental designs, potential threats to such designs, and ways to mitigate these threats.
The inaugural edition of the FESS will take place from 12-18 June 2023. The workshop is designed for doctoral students studying economics, business studies, humanities, and social sciences. It will also benefit early career researchers and those working in think tanks, donor organizations, and NGOs with extensive research portfolios.
The seven-day workshop will be conducted over 30 hours, with over 10 hours of laboratory sessions with each day of the workshop featuring classroom and laboratory sessions.
FESS will be spearheaded by Dr. Vivek Pandey, Professor of Economics at IRMA, where he studies empirical development economics, survey design, field experiments, and program evaluation. He also chairs the Verghese Kurien Policy Lab (VKPL) at IRMA where he is engaged in designing field experiments to scale-up strategies to expand the use of cheap fintech technologies, identify mechanisms through which community based organizations can be leveraged to deliver health services to women, and labour market discrimination in developing countries. His research has been published in Business and Society, Food Policy, Public Administration and Development, and Feminist Economics.
About the Program
The FESS designed by the Verghese Kurien Policy Lab (VKPL) is tailored for doctoral students studying economics, business management, humanities, and social sciences. In addition, the workshop can also benefit early career researchers, as well as those working in think-tanks, donor organizations, and NGOs with extensive research portfolios, including technical grant writing.
Workshop Objective
The main aim of the annual workshop is to promote the culture of experimental research in order to test and scale-up innovative ideas through academic inquiry. In the past, academics were only expected to propose solutions, but these ideas were not always implemented. However, in the current context, researchers are expected to not only generate innovative solutions to complex problems but also implement them and
provide evidence of their effectiveness. Designing and conducting field experiments offer a way to test multiple solutions simultaneously, rather than taking a step-by-step approach. Additionally, there is growing demand to use experiments in doctoral work to enhance the credibility and trustworthiness of research outputs. The workshop recognizes the increasing importance of field experiments in securing external funding for empirical research. The workshop will cover a range of experimental methods and coding strategies, as well as various experimental designs, potential threats to such designs, and ways to mitigate these threats. To achieve this goal, the workshop encourages doctoral students to bring their research problems and collaborate with learning groups to discover potential opportunities for randomization in their research.
Duration and Course Outline
The workshop will be conducted for 30 hours and will include content that is comparable to a 3-credit coursework that spans a trimester.
Laboratory sessions will comprise approximately 10 hours of the workshop’s duration. Each day of the workshop will feature classroom and laboratory sessions.
Day 1, and 2: The Randomization Framework
Topics covered: Causality, Potential Outcomes, Selection Bias, Counterfactuals, and introductory mathematical statistics
Lab Session: Introduction to Stata programming
Day 3: Research Design for Field Experiments and design of field surveys
Topics covered: Statistical tests, Power Calculations, Mechanics of Randomization (clustering, blocking), Lab-in-field experiments
Lab Session: Computation of statistical power and randomization exercise
Day 4, 5, and 6: Econometrics of Field Experiments
Topics covered: Regression analysis of field experiments, covariate selection, fixed effects, treatment effects, heterogeneous effects,multiple observations, multiple treatment arms, attrition, spillovers, permutation tests, randomized inference, multiple hypothesis test corrections, and machine learning applications in field experiments
Lab Session: Replication of several research papers, and SurveyCTO programming
Day 7: Designing your own field experiment and final presentations
General Instructions
Every participant taking this course will receive a time-limited free license of STATA. Participants must bring their own laptop. The instructors will share all the presentations, data, and code files on the course google drive. Workshop application deadline is 8th June 2023.
Venue: Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), Anand, Gujarat.
email: mdp@irma.ac.in
Course Fee
Student Hostel accommodation- INR 41,300 inclusive of GST
Executive accommodation (subject to availability)- INR 66,080 inclusive of GST
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Instructors
Vivek Pandey is a full professor of Economics at Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), where he studies empirical development economics, survey design, field experiments, and program evaluation. He also chairs the Verghese Kurien Policy Lab (VKPL) at IRMA where he is engaged in designing field experiments to scale-up strategies to expand the use of cheap fintech technologies, identify mechanisms through which community based organizations can be leveraged to deliver health services to women, and labor market discrimination in developing countries. His research has been published in Business and Society, Food Policy, Public Administration and Development, and
Feminist Economics. He received his PhD in Applied Economics from Michigan State University in 2014.
Harpreet Singh holds a M.A. in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics. He recently worked as a Senior Research Associate in the J-PAL South Asia (2022- 2023) where he worked on the initiative that monitors the experience of beneficiaries and Fair Price Shop owners within the framework of the Public Distribution System. Earlier he had worked as a Research Fellow at VKPL (2020-2022). Starting August 2023, he will be joining the doctoral program in the Economics Department at the McGill University, Canada. Elangbam Kyamba Khanganba is a Research fellow at VKPL. At the lab, he has been working on issues related to maternal and child health, decentralization and governance, etc. that draws upon experimental and quasi-experimental work. He holds a M.A. in Economics from Madras
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