Thanks a lot for your research and writeup! Really nice to see follow-up work on this topic.
A few thoughts:
Is growth work neglected? I’m not sure if that’s the right question to ask. After all, “micro” development (direct service delivery) type work isn’t neglected—tons of money go into it each year—but most had no good evidence behind it, which motivated the founding of GiveWell, IDinsight etc. So perhaps whether “effective” work in growth is neglected is the more relevant question. Though I agree with you that it may be hard to assess the field as a whole compared to individual orgs.
The orgs you listed:
As you said, some (like IGC) focus more on “randomista” type work (I think this applies to Y-RISE too though they care more about effects at scale). I’m guessing there are more orgs focused on the more “macro” aspect of growth, e.g. growth diagnostics.
ODI’s fellowship program is a really interesting model, but I’m not sure how effective it is or how much they measure their impact. I’ve met a few former fellows who after finishing an undergrad econ degree went to work in a ministry in a LMIC for some time, and they told me it wasn’t clear they had much impact. I suspect ODI may want to place more experienced people—now they say they only select masters/PhD graduates, but from what I heard they pay very little, so perhaps that’s a constraint on impact too. It’s a really interesting and high-potential mode but I suspect it can be greatly improved. (IDinsight where I currently work has a similar approach of having embedded learning partnerships with LMIC governments, though as one can expect there are a lot of challenges in working with and influencing them. IDinsight for now focuses more on “randomista”/micro topics like health, education, cash transfers, but topics like tax administration and state capacity are on our minds too.)
Relatedly, perhaps an impactful thing is to fund scholarships for bureaucrats in LMICs to study in top policy schools, e.g. Harvard’s MPA-ID. I heard Latin America (e.g. Mexico, Peru) did a lot of this and it has impacted how governments work there, but don’t know much; I also know some Indian IAS officers have done this.
I am not sure if it would necessarily be that much work evaluating the potential impact, or just track record, of an org. One can sometimes establish a credible causal link using case studies. E.g. Open Phil cited a few impressive achievements of CGD and attributed certain results to orgs in their history of philanthropy studies. In fact, I was hoping for some kind of analysis like that for the growth-promoting (or research) orgs. But of course you (authors) would know better than me about your situation!
BTW, have you checked out Nick Bloom’s work on management practice? He shows it’s a significant constraint on productivity in LMICs (of course, maybe not as fundamental as institutions/politics, but could still be an important one). This interview with him is interesting: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/nicholas-bloom/
Thanks for this great comment! I agree with you on neglectedness, I think the field is so broad that by looking at high-level funding we’re probably counting a lot of stuff that isn’t relevant directly to the question of “would there by impactful work that’s currently unfunded?”, which is waht we actually care about.
Agree also our list of potential orgs working in the space is a bit random and probably misses some good, relevant funding opportunities. Thanks for the info about ODI and IDinsight, too.
My concern with wading into specific evaluations is less about establishing a credible/plausible causal link, and more about collecting enough data to build a proper counterfactual. My impression is that substantial policy changes often involve many different organisations, departments, and people, and it’s hard to work out whose presence made a difference. Our decision to stop short at this time was based heavily on our colleagues’ evaluations for climate organisations, which required a huge investment to confidently work out whose impact was truly counterfactual.
In any case, I’d love to speak more about your experience in the field if we take this work further—if you’re interested in that, please feel free to DM me so we can keep in touch.
I see. Let me know if I’m understanding this correctly: Founders Pledge aims to have cost-effectiveness estimate numbers, which involves a lot of work especially for topics like growth and climate change, whereas Open Phil takes a more qualitative approach for such topics with higher uncertainty. (If so, I am also curious about the philosophy behind your approach—I’m really uncertain which one works better, and that’s a bigger conversation.)
Re topics to look into, I second Michael’s suggestions: labor markets, firms, and monetary policy in developing countries. There’s also: trade, infrastructure, industrial policy, legal system, institutions etc. (Nick Bloom whom I mentioned earlier had the hypothesis that improving management practice in LMICs could be pretty impactful, and that requires a type of education/training not commonly discussed in LMICs.)
One thing tangentially related is Emergent Ventures India. (They don’t have a formal website—all updates seem to be posted on the Marginal Revolution blog.) It’s not growth-specific but rather just for innovative ideas that improve welfare. They don’t have any rigorous analysis (so I’m not sure whether it will fly with EAs) but the projects look cool and it could be a high-potential model (if expanded to Africa etc.).
Thanks a lot for your research and writeup! Really nice to see follow-up work on this topic.
A few thoughts:
Is growth work neglected? I’m not sure if that’s the right question to ask. After all, “micro” development (direct service delivery) type work isn’t neglected—tons of money go into it each year—but most had no good evidence behind it, which motivated the founding of GiveWell, IDinsight etc. So perhaps whether “effective” work in growth is neglected is the more relevant question. Though I agree with you that it may be hard to assess the field as a whole compared to individual orgs.
The orgs you listed:
As you said, some (like IGC) focus more on “randomista” type work (I think this applies to Y-RISE too though they care more about effects at scale). I’m guessing there are more orgs focused on the more “macro” aspect of growth, e.g. growth diagnostics.
ODI’s fellowship program is a really interesting model, but I’m not sure how effective it is or how much they measure their impact. I’ve met a few former fellows who after finishing an undergrad econ degree went to work in a ministry in a LMIC for some time, and they told me it wasn’t clear they had much impact. I suspect ODI may want to place more experienced people—now they say they only select masters/PhD graduates, but from what I heard they pay very little, so perhaps that’s a constraint on impact too. It’s a really interesting and high-potential mode but I suspect it can be greatly improved. (IDinsight where I currently work has a similar approach of having embedded learning partnerships with LMIC governments, though as one can expect there are a lot of challenges in working with and influencing them. IDinsight for now focuses more on “randomista”/micro topics like health, education, cash transfers, but topics like tax administration and state capacity are on our minds too.)
Relatedly, perhaps an impactful thing is to fund scholarships for bureaucrats in LMICs to study in top policy schools, e.g. Harvard’s MPA-ID. I heard Latin America (e.g. Mexico, Peru) did a lot of this and it has impacted how governments work there, but don’t know much; I also know some Indian IAS officers have done this.
I am not sure if it would necessarily be that much work evaluating the potential impact, or just track record, of an org. One can sometimes establish a credible causal link using case studies. E.g. Open Phil cited a few impressive achievements of CGD and attributed certain results to orgs in their history of philanthropy studies. In fact, I was hoping for some kind of analysis like that for the growth-promoting (or research) orgs. But of course you (authors) would know better than me about your situation!
BTW, have you checked out Nick Bloom’s work on management practice? He shows it’s a significant constraint on productivity in LMICs (of course, maybe not as fundamental as institutions/politics, but could still be an important one). This interview with him is interesting: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/nicholas-bloom/
Thanks for this great comment! I agree with you on neglectedness, I think the field is so broad that by looking at high-level funding we’re probably counting a lot of stuff that isn’t relevant directly to the question of “would there by impactful work that’s currently unfunded?”, which is waht we actually care about.
Agree also our list of potential orgs working in the space is a bit random and probably misses some good, relevant funding opportunities. Thanks for the info about ODI and IDinsight, too.
My concern with wading into specific evaluations is less about establishing a credible/plausible causal link, and more about collecting enough data to build a proper counterfactual. My impression is that substantial policy changes often involve many different organisations, departments, and people, and it’s hard to work out whose presence made a difference. Our decision to stop short at this time was based heavily on our colleagues’ evaluations for climate organisations, which required a huge investment to confidently work out whose impact was truly counterfactual.
In any case, I’d love to speak more about your experience in the field if we take this work further—if you’re interested in that, please feel free to DM me so we can keep in touch.
I see. Let me know if I’m understanding this correctly: Founders Pledge aims to have cost-effectiveness estimate numbers, which involves a lot of work especially for topics like growth and climate change, whereas Open Phil takes a more qualitative approach for such topics with higher uncertainty. (If so, I am also curious about the philosophy behind your approach—I’m really uncertain which one works better, and that’s a bigger conversation.)
Re topics to look into, I second Michael’s suggestions: labor markets, firms, and monetary policy in developing countries. There’s also: trade, infrastructure, industrial policy, legal system, institutions etc. (Nick Bloom whom I mentioned earlier had the hypothesis that improving management practice in LMICs could be pretty impactful, and that requires a type of education/training not commonly discussed in LMICs.)
One thing tangentially related is Emergent Ventures India. (They don’t have a formal website—all updates seem to be posted on the Marginal Revolution blog.) It’s not growth-specific but rather just for innovative ideas that improve welfare. They don’t have any rigorous analysis (so I’m not sure whether it will fly with EAs) but the projects look cool and it could be a high-potential model (if expanded to Africa etc.).
Happy to keep in touch—will shoot you a DM!