About the Authors

Rachel Glennerster (Photo: Blu Nordgren)

Kudzai Takavarasha (Photo: Dr. Sothy Eng)

Rachel Glennerster joined the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) as executive director in 2004.  She earned her BA in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University and her PhD in economics from Birkbeck College, University of London.  She was an economic advisor at the UK Treasury and a development associate at the Harvard Institute for International Development.  She acted as technical assistant to the UK Executive Director of the IMF and World Bank before joining the IMF staff in 1997, where she worked on debt relief and the IMF’s response to lessons of the Asian Financial Crisis. 

She is coauthor of Strong Medicine: Creating Incentives for Pharmaceutical Research on Neglected Diseases and “Using Randomization in Development Economics Research: A Toolkit,” (with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer), in the Handbook of Development Economics.  Her research includes randomized evaluations of community-driven development in Sierra Leone, empowerment of adolescent girls in Bangladesh, health programs in Pakistan and India, and education and microfinance programs in India.  She is a regular lecturer on J-PAL’s executive education courses and advanced training courses for academics in developing countries. 

Kudzai Takavarasha is a native of Zimbabwe.  He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in Chemical Engineering and Economics.  After a stint in management consulting and software development, he joined the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab shortly after it was founded, and helped develop its policy briefcase and bulletin series as well as the material for its executive education course which covers the same ground as Running Randomized Evaluations.  He left J-PAL in 2012 after completing Running Randomized Evaluations, to focus on his writing.  He currently lives in Palo Alto, California with his wife and daughter. 

Running Randomized Evaluations: A Practical Guide

This book provides a comprehensive yet accessible guide to running randomized impact evaluations of social programs.  Drawing on the experience of researchers at the J-PAL, which has run hundreds of such evaluations in dozens of countries throughout the world, it offers practical insights on how to use this powerful technique, especially in resource-poor environments.