The success of evidence-based analysis of public policy requires that methods to measure the economic impact of public policy and policy reforms are accurate and verifiable. This requires evaluation methods themselves to be continually assessed and scrutinised to ensure that the answers given to policy-interested agencies are reliable. Research at the Centre addresses a range of questions relating to evaluation methods currently in use in applied policy analysis:

• how good are ex ante evaluation methods at predicting responses to public policy reform?
• how do alternative evaluation techniques stack up against one another when analysing a known policy intervention?
• can one combine ex ante and ex post evaluation methods in a way that validates the former, and increases the scope of the latter?
• to what extent can evaluation methods evolve to predict wider economic impact of public policy reform;
• can evaluation methods be developed in a way that might assist in the optimal design of tax and welfare policies?