WS MoreOrLess: Money for nothing?

Published: June 21, 2014, 5 a.m.

When it comes to aid, what works best \u2013 giving people food, shelter, medicine, or just handing over cash and letting them spend it how they like? One group of researchers went to a Kenyan village to try to answer this question and to do so they also employed a new tool - randomised controlled testing. RCTs have long been the gold standard for measuring whether medical drugs work, but could they revolutionise how we measure the impact of aid?