LEEP is a pretty unusual situation in general I think, and I’m not sure is super generalisable. If you get an easy-ish win with lead things, the cost-effectiveness can be insane (see the bangladesh cumin situation).
This is one of the reasons I don’t love post-hoc Cost-effectiveness assessments of successful individual campaigns and policy changes which don’t take into account the probability that their (now successful) campaign might have failed—which I have seen a number of times on the lead front. For every win there might be 5, or 10 or 20 failures (which is fine). If you just zero in on the successes then cost-effective numbers look unrealistically rosy.
If the initial assessment say for LEEP in Malawi assessed say a 20% chance of success, then this should be factored into their final calculation I think, then they can perhaps update it if they realise their success rate increases. Otherwise we end up not costing in the failed campaigns, while the successful ones appear ludicrously cost-effective.
Yeah, though to be fair the CEA for Malawi was b/c it was LEEP’s literal first campaign. I’d imagine LEEP has CEAs for all their country work which include adjustments for likelihood of success, though I don’t know whether they intend to publish them any time soon.
LEEP is a pretty unusual situation in general I think, and I’m not sure is super generalisable. If you get an easy-ish win with lead things, the cost-effectiveness can be insane (see the bangladesh cumin situation).
Yeah makes sense, and that the early research could have been heavily discounted by pessimism about a charity achieving big wins.
This is one of the reasons I don’t love post-hoc Cost-effectiveness assessments of successful individual campaigns and policy changes which don’t take into account the probability that their (now successful) campaign might have failed—which I have seen a number of times on the lead front. For every win there might be 5, or 10 or 20 failures (which is fine). If you just zero in on the successes then cost-effective numbers look unrealistically rosy.
If the initial assessment say for LEEP in Malawi assessed say a 20% chance of success, then this should be factored into their final calculation I think, then they can perhaps update it if they realise their success rate increases. Otherwise we end up not costing in the failed campaigns, while the successful ones appear ludicrously cost-effective.
Yeah, though to be fair the CEA for Malawi was b/c it was LEEP’s literal first campaign. I’d imagine LEEP has CEAs for all their country work which include adjustments for likelihood of success, though I don’t know whether they intend to publish them any time soon.