The Logic of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences

Now that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019 to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for ‘their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty’, it is perhaps useful to consider the ‘experimental approach’ behind their methodology of Randomised Controlled Trials, and the effects of this method on development thinking and developing countries.