Crawling before walking: pilot plans to improve public policies, by Jaume Vives

Boston is well-known for its excellent health and technology environment, and researchers in the city organize numerous field tests and control groups to evaluate advances before taking further steps towards the most innovative scientific advances. “No one disputes that this method is essential for scientific progress, but it is not so easy in the field of economics, in which large-scale experiments have to deal with the complexity of the effects of public policies," says Vives.

In Barcelona, pilot plans to improve public policies have been implemented by the Catalan Government, which has been advised by researchers from UPF and the UAB. This “makes it possible to understand for the first time' the spillover effects of these policies in a European country," says the MIT doctoral student. According to Vives, this pilot plan is “an example of hwo to evaluate public policies without the need to implement them on a large scale and at a high social and economic cost.'

Read the full article aquí.

If you want to know the latest English news about Barcelona and the people who bring it to life,  sign up to our Blog.