Administrative Data and Economic Policy Evaluation

This paper looks at the strengths and weaknesses of using administrative data for economic policy evaluation. It does this by looking at how school administrative data has been used to assess school effectiveness and the impact of month of birth on educational outcomes with varying degrees of success. It concludes that if there is some natural experiment in the way the education is delivered or an education initiative is introduced, then schools’ administrative data offers the opportunity of answering questions of extreme policy interest in a robust way – even without rich background information on the students and their families.