Incorporating ethics and welfare into randomized experiments.
rct · Level II
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 33443151.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1073/pnas.2008740118 and PMC identifier 7817215.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC-ND.
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Abstract
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) enroll hundreds of millions of subjects and involve many human lives. To improve subjects' welfare, I propose a design of RCTs that I call Experiment-as-Market (EXAM). EXAM produces a welfare-maximizing allocation of treatment-assignment probabilities, is almost incentive-compatible for preference elicitation, and unbiasedly estimates any causal effect estimable with standard RCTs. I quantify these properties by applying EXAM to a water-cleaning experiment in Kenya. In this empirical setting, compared to standard RCTs, EXAM improves subjects' predicted well-being while reaching similar treatment-effect estimates with similar precision.
Medical subject headings
- Human Experimentation
- Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic
- Research Subjects