The field experiment method is being progressively valued by the world's mainstream economics research institutes in recent years, and has become one of the important research methods in the field of economics. Combining the strengths of field research and natural experimentation, field experiments offer a research method that addresses both external validity and the effective identification of causal relationships in reality. To conduct frontier research in real-world-oriented economics in the Chinese society, known for its complexity and diversity, a collaboration between IIDPF and the University of Nottingham and the Center for Decision and Experimental Economics (CeDEx), Europe's top-ranked center for behavioural and experimental economics, was established in April 2018 as the Field Experimental Research Center (FERC) to conduct cross-national research in the field of public policy evaluation. The first Summer School on Field Experimental Research Methods in China was held in July 2018, bringing leading international research methods for policy evaluation and decision making in economics to PhD students and young scholars from China and abroad.
Prof. Lina Song, professor and director of the Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham, is the Director of the FERC. Through field experiments, a cutting-edge research method, we are able to take income distribution research to the micro level of individuals, households and communities, and raise policy recommendations to the macro level of government actionability, adding to China's reform assault. FERC is highly experienced in experimental design and sample selection, which provides a strong guarantee for the formulation and evaluation of income distribution and fiscal policies. At present, FERC conducts experimental design, selects experimental sites and trains experimenters in the fields of income distribution, precise poverty alleviation and human development, providing a high-level academic exchange platform for relevant colleagues in China.
FREC focuses on three main field experimental research domains: 1. its application at the micro level, exploring how research in areas such as income distribution, precise poverty alleviation, relevant public finance policies and common human development can be infiltrated to the micro level of individuals, households and communities through the field experimental method. 2. the application of public policies and projects, exploring how field experiments can be applied to China's anti-poverty policies, basic public policies such as education and healthcare, and public projects such as public health surveillance and public goods demand tests. 3. the application of policy evaluation related to income distribution, studying how to apply the field experiment method to the targeted policy evaluation of policies related to taxation, fiscal expenditure and fiscal security, and demonstrating the accuracy and generalisability of the relevant research.