Development economists have tried to grapple with the implications of this experimental approach on their field. Deaton and Dreze have been vocal critics of the Nobel win; their arguments are encapsulated as below.

The politics of policies is ignored.

Policy suggestions derived from this approach would be based on empirical evidence: but the implementation of  value arguments and policies on ground would depend upon will and live politics. For example, inclusion of eggs in mid-day meals augur well for enhancing child nutrition – but this could be opposed by religious groups that preach vegetarianism. As Dreze writes in this context:  “This endeavour, however, is likely to be all the more useful if we bear in mind that evidence involves more than RCTs, understanding more than evidence, and policy more than understanding.”

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Samples may not hold true for the entire populace.

In the randomised control trial approach, evidence is established by conducting trials in a target group: then this evidence is generalised for a large segment. If it works at one place, it might not be guaranteed that it works in other places as well, and if the solution to this is to carry out a number of localised trials  and provide for a better sample size, then we must confront the fact that this experimental approach comes with its monetary costs, and these costs may hamper feasibility of more localised experiments. Moreover, the institutional setups that developmental economics has been rooted in risks glossing over; as Sanjeev Reddy notes:  “Randomised trials cannot help greatly to illuminate the merits of broader and more complex proposals for institutional design arising in crucible of real problem solving.”

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RCTs must confront its ethical paradoxes.

Chirantan Chatterjee writes for the Telegraph: “It should be noted that Nobel laureates like Angus Deaton and others have debated the use of RCT methods because of their concern for ethics and external validity. In 2016, Banerjee and his co-authors published the findings of an RCT with informal healthcare providers in West Bengal in Science. They noted that training informal providers increased correct case management rates but did not reduce the use of unnecessary medicines or antibiotics. While this is a neat causal finding for countries with inadequate formally trained doctors and nurses, the study raises questions on the ethics of the intervention, its external validity, and the operationalization at scale.  History suggests that this may be dangerous, especially for settings like India with its informal care providers.”

RCTs are subject to inadvertent bias. Representativeness of such trials might influence policies as well. What is the extent of randomisation? How can we create truly random groups, and if such groups are random, are they truly representative of the realities on ground? RCTs in economics pose the same ethical concerns associated with RCTs in medicine: who gets the drug and who doesn’t? This consideration has not received enough coverage in popular media.

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What are the implications for the field of developmental economics?

Dipa Sinha, noted academician, though suggests that their work has revolutionized the field of developmental economics, but the structures and institutions that create poverty are not challenged and discussed. Dr Shialaja Fennell, Senior Lecturer at the Centre of Development Studies at Cambridge University, writes a word of caution against widespread use of RCTs in development research: “It is good that the contribution of development economics has been recognised. However, it is important to note that experimental RCTs and natural experiments tend to estimate abstract efficacy instead of actual efficacy. The difference between these two types of efficacy arises due to a false assumption that a ‘gold standard’ of perfect identification is possible from the evidence obtained from the experiment. The evidence is then taken at face-value without due regard to the possibility of conceptual or ethical concerns.”