LAUNCH OF RAMJAS ECONOMIC REVIEW
VOLUME VII
The 18th of November, 2025 marked the day when the Editorial Board of Ramjas Economic Review released the 7th volume of its annual academic journal, under the Economics Department of Ramjas College. The launch celebration was distinguished by the presence of Prof. C. S. C. Sekhar, Professor and Head at the Agricultural Economics Research Centre, Institute of Economic Growth, who was invited to deliver a lecture on the theme “Understanding Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs): Scope, Biases, and Limitations.”
After presenting the Guest of Honour with a small token of respect, the proceedings began with a short address to the audience by Dr. Sonia Goel, whose constant guidance was crucial to this volume of RER. She reflected on the journal’s journey—from beginning as a student magazine in 2004 to now emerging as an ISSN-certified, peer-reviewed international academic journal for undergraduate research in economics. She then extended a warm welcome to all attendees and congratulated the Editorial Board, the faculty, and the students for the successful creation and publication of yet another volume of Ramjas Economic Review. Thereafter, The Editor-in-Chief, Vishwapriya Pradish, then shared a brief message acknowledging the year-long process behind Volume VII and expressed gratitude to the authors, faculty mentors, and alumni reviewers.
The lecture by Prof. Sekhar focused on encouraging students to move beyond classroom learning and to understand the gap between theory and real-world research methods. He explained that, although Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) have existed for decades, their early roots lie in agricultural experiments led by Ronald A. Fisher and Neyman. He emphasized how the design we use today in economics—the Completely Randomized Design—was originally made for farmland and medical science, and later extended to human behaviour.​
​​Prof. Sekhar shed light on the basic structure of RCTs, where two groups drawn from a population are made as similar as possible. One receives an intervention (treatment group), while the other does not (control group), and the difference in outcomes between them is interpreted as the treatment effect. However, he explained why bias still appears, even after randomization: since human behaviour depends on hidden factors like motivation, beliefs, ideology and culture, which cannot be measured or equally distributed across groups.
Contrasting RCTs with mathematical growth models, he explained why RCTs gained such immense popularity—mainly due to their simplicity and direct causal interpretation. Their influence surged, especially within development economics, culminating in the 2019 Nobel Prize to Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer for using RCTs to empirically test “what works” in tackling poverty, education, and health challenges.​​​​
Prof. Sekhar further elaborated on major limitations of RCTs:
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​They cannot capture economy-wide impacts, since most experiments are localized and ignore spillover effects on markets, wages, and competition.
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They suffer from poor external validity, meaning results from one community cannot be applied everywhere.
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They show what works but not why it works, often failing to identify underlying behavioural or institutional mechanisms.
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Human choices create compliance problems, as participants may refuse treatment, drop out, or behave strategically.​​​​
​​​Towards the end, Prof. Sekhar discussed recent innovations in experimental methods. He highlighted how researchers now combine economic theory with field experiments, scale up RCTs to larger populations, use multi-stage randomization to separate mechanisms, and adopt adaptive randomization to address compliance issues.​
​Following this, an interactive session took place where students posed questions driven by curiosity and critical engagement. Their doubts spanned issues such as experimental biases, demand constraints, participant behaviour, institutional shortcomings, and policy validity across regions. Prof. Sekhar patiently responded with concise explanations and convincing examples, enriching the understanding of experimental research and its broader implications.
Thereafter, we proceeded with the long-awaited release of our academic journal. The faculty members and editorial board assembled together as Prof. C. S. C. Sekhar formally launched Ramjas Economic Review, Volume VII, which was then published and made available on the journal’s official website.
The event concluded with a closing address by the Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Anuj Tiwari, who expressed appreciation to the faculty, speakers, and the editorial team for their dedication to student-led research at Ramjas College. The ceremony ended with a collective expression of thanks and enthusiasm towards strengthening undergraduate academic writing and research contributions in the coming years.
