Ex Ante Evaluation of Social Programs

This paper discusses methods,for evaluating,the impacts,of social programs,prior to their implementation.,Ex ante evaluation,is useful for designing programs,that achieve some optimality criteria, such as maximizing impact for a given cost. This paper illustrates the use of behavioral models,in predicting the impacts,of hypothetical,programs,in a way,that is not functional form dependent.,Among,the programs,considered are wage,subsidy pro- grams, conditional cash transfer programs, and income support programs. In some cases, the behavioral model justifies a completely nonparametric estimation strategy, even when there is no direct variation in the policy instrument. In other cases, stronger assumptions are required to evaluate a program,ex ante. We illustrate the application of ex ante evaluation methods,using data from the PROGRESA school subsidy randomized,experiment,in Mex- ico. We assess the effectiveness of the ex ante prediction method,by comparing,predictions of program,impacts,to the impacts,measured,under the randomized,experiment.,The sub- samples pertain to girls and boys aged 12-15. For the girls, the predicted impacts are fairly similar to the actual impacts, both in magnitude and in replicating the age patterns, with larger impacts observed at higher ages. For boys, the predicted impacts tend to overstate the actual impacts. The ex-ante evaluation,method,is also used to predict the effects of counterfactal programs,that include changes,to the subsidy schedule and an unconditional income,transfer. 1,Introduction Most program,evaluation,research focuses on the problem,of ex post evaluation,of existing