Losner Briones: Evidential challenges in Universal Basic Income experiments

Tuesday March 11 2025 @11:30 (CET)
Sala B, Edificio de Humanidades, UNED & online

Abstract
This talk explores the underexamined distinction between randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and pilot studies in policy experimentation, focusing on their implications for Universal Basic Income (UBI) programs. While both methodologies coexist in UBI research and development economics, their evidential contributions often remain conflated under ambiguous labels, obscuring important methodological nuances. Drawing on cases such as the Finnish Basic Income Experiment (2017–2018) and the B-Mincome Experiment in Barcelona (2017–2019), this work investigates how monistic and pluralistic methods contribute differently to understanding policy effectiveness.

Building on the framework of Evidential Pluralism, my research examines how integrating statistical and mechanistic evidence can address challenges in causal inference within distributive policies. Methodological constraints in UBI experiments, including financial limitations, necessitate combining diverse data and approaches, making them ideal case studies for extending Evidential Pluralism to the social sciences.

Additionally, this work addresses epistemological and political challenges posed by evidence-based policy (EBP). Methodological hierarchies privileging RCTs risk marginalizing evidence from pilot studies, limiting the scope of distributive policy research. This talk highlights the need for a more balanced and nuanced understanding of evidence production, urging a reconsideration of epistemic and political assumptions in policy experimentation.

Bio
Losner Briones is a predoctoral researcher at the Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science at UNED, and a member of METIS research group in analytical philosophy. He is an FPI [Formación de Personal Investigador] fellow at the project ‘Evidence and Mechanisms in the Social Sciences’ (PID2021-125936NB-I00). His research focuses on the philosophy of social sciences, with particular emphasis on epistemological, methodological, and ontological issues pertaining to causal extrapolation. He is currently examining UBI experiments through the lens of Evidential Pluralism.