Resumen de The early history of program evaluation and the department of labor

Orley Ashenfelter

• The article looks at the history of the U.S. Department of Labor, focusing on its efforts to develop effective evaluations of its programs. The author, former head of the department's Office of Evaluation, discusses the challenges of evaluating the 1970s Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) program. He discusses aspects of the evaluation process related to the selection of appropriate data and to exogenous factors and the need for control groups and benchmarks. Topics include longitudinal data, the difference-in-differences method, and the relationship between economic theory and the evaluation of labor market-related programs.