Thoughtful coverage of ongoing discussions in the field — RCTs versus observational methods, external validity, ethics, bias, and the limits of causal claims.
Mediation Analysis: Can We Ever Identify Indirect Effects?
Machine Learning or Economic Theory? The Debate Over Covariate Selection in Applied Economics
Reduced Form vs Structural Models: Do We Need Theory for External Validity?
Treatment Effect Heterogeneity: Feature or Bug in Policy Evaluation?
Should Long-Run Effects of Short-Run Interventions Be Trusted?
Clustering Standard Errors: When, Why, and At What Level?
Pooling vs. Stratification: Should Policy Evaluations Report Subgroup Effects?
The Replication Crisis in Economics: Beyond Pre-registration
Is Every "Natural Experiment" Really Natural? Scrutinising the Exclusion Restriction
Selection on Parallel Trends: The Hidden Assumption Behind Conditional DiD
Machine Learning versus Structural Models: Two Visions of Policy Counterfactuals
Publication Bias and the File Drawer Problem: Are Published Effect Sizes Too Big?
Synthetic Control vs. Difference-in-Differences: When to Use Which?
Should Covariates Always Be Included in Randomised Experiments?
The Parallel Trends Assumption: Testable, Credible, or Dogma?
RCTs vs. Observational Studies: Is Randomisation the Gold Standard?
Pre-registration and Researcher Degrees of Freedom: Does Economics Have a Replication Problem?
External Validity: Are Local Average Treatment Effects Policy-Relevant?