Evaluating the Econometric Evaluations of Training Programs with Experimental Data.

This paper takes the results of an employment and training program thatwas run as a field experiment, in which the participants were randomlyassigned into a treatment or a control group, and compares these results to the estimates that might have been produced by an econometrician who evaluated the program using the same econometric procedures that have been used in the program evaluation literature. This comparison shows that many of these econometric procedures fail toreplicate the experimentally determined results, and suggests that researchers should be aware of the potential for specification errorsin other nonexperimental evaluations. Copyright 1986 by American Economic Association.