将伦理和福利纳入随机实验。

Incorporating ethics and welfare into randomized experiments.

机构信息

Department of Economics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511;

Cowles Foundation, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511.

出版信息

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Jan 5;118(1). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2008740118.

DOI:10.1073/pnas.2008740118

PMID:33443151

原文链接:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7817215/

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.

摘要

随机对照试验（RCTs）招募了数亿名受试者，涉及到许多人的生命。为了提高受试者的福利，我提出了一种 RCTs 的设计，我称之为实验即市场（EXAM）。EXAM 产生了一种使福利最大化的治疗分配概率分配，对于偏好 elicitation 几乎是激励相容的，并且可以公正地估计任何可以用标准 RCTs 估计的因果效应。我通过将 EXAM 应用于肯尼亚的一项水净化实验来量化这些性质。在这个实证环境中，与标准 RCTs 相比，EXAM 在达到类似治疗效果估计的同时，提高了受试者的预期幸福感，且具有相似的精度。