Causality, Impartiality and Evidence-Based Policy - Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics - page 214

NGOs (or non-profit organisations in general for that matter) have also a
problem of credibility, not unlike the pharmaceutical industry: they usually have
a stake in the programmes they evaluate (Pritchett 2002 ). And randomisation does
not seem to be a good enough warrant of impartiality to convince governments that
they can trust an assessment and implement it at a bigger scale. This is probably
why Duflo and Kremer ( 2005 , pp. 115-117) advocate the creation of a sort of
international 'regulatory agency' for development policies. International organi-
sations involved in development should establish an office with the following
mission. It should assess the 'ability of the evaluation to deliver reliable causal
estimates of the project's impact' and 'conduct credible evaluations in key areas'
(p. 115).
In other words, international organisations should provide the impartial expertise
required to make the trials credible to the involved parties. This is probably the best
solution. However, it remains an open question why would the participants in the
trial see the international organisation as a neutral third party they can trust. Only if
they do, one can be certain that the trials it sponsors are a credible source of
knowledge about their target population.
Acknowledgements Our most sincere thanks to Hsiang-Ke Chao and Szu-Ting Chen for
organising the very hospitable and intellectually fruitful conference in which this chapter was
originally presented. Thanks to the editors and reviewers for their comments. Teira's research has
been funded by the Spanish Ministry grant FFI2011-28835.
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