I think way more time has been invested into GiveWell’s recommendations of AMF and Malaria Consortium than the time dedicated to producing the best investment paper on malaria:
A typical paper is written in a few months.
GiveWell has been doing doing cost-effectiveness analyses of AMF’s interventions since 2012, and Malaria Consortium’s since 2016.
From what I have seen, GiveWell often “goes beyond the papers” in order to really get at the best guess of the cost-effectiveness intervention, often adjusting the results found in the literature.
GiveWell understands well the limitations of naive cost-effectiveness estimates.
I should also note I meant more accurate conditional on a given set of values (namely, value of saving lives as a function of age and country, and value of income compared to health):
GiveWell has spent much more time studying the interventions than figuring out their moral weights.
I tend to think economic growth is a better proxy for contributing to a better world than GiveWell’s moral weights, which I suspect put too much weight on health, and do not account for saving lives in low income countries contributing less to the global economy.
What’s your basis for assuming GiveWell’s estimates are more accurate?
Thanks for the question, Joshua. Briefly:
I think way more time has been invested into GiveWell’s recommendations of AMF and Malaria Consortium than the time dedicated to producing the best investment paper on malaria:
A typical paper is written in a few months.
GiveWell has been doing doing cost-effectiveness analyses of AMF’s interventions since 2012, and Malaria Consortium’s since 2016.
GiveWell spends 51.1 kh/year (= 0.75*40*46*37) doing research.
From what I have seen, GiveWell often “goes beyond the papers” in order to really get at the best guess of the cost-effectiveness intervention, often adjusting the results found in the literature.
GiveWell understands well the limitations of naive cost-effectiveness estimates.
I should also note I meant more accurate conditional on a given set of values (namely, value of saving lives as a function of age and country, and value of income compared to health):
GiveWell has spent much more time studying the interventions than figuring out their moral weights.
I tend to think economic growth is a better proxy for contributing to a better world than GiveWell’s moral weights, which I suspect put too much weight on health, and do not account for saving lives in low income countries contributing less to the global economy.