Banerjee & Duflo ‘Foreign affairs’ article is pretty bad, and contains an interesting error, so maybe it should be removed:
“Between 2014 and 2016, a total of 582 million insecticide-treated mosquito nets were delivered globally. Of these, 75 percent were given out through mass distribution campaigns of free bed nets, saving tens of millions of lives.”
They actually repeat this mistake in their recent book ‘Good economics for hard times’:
“The magazine Nature concluded that insecticide-treated net distributions averted 450 million malaria deaths between 2000 and 2015.”
which probably based on an old GWWC article, but they mix up deaths and cases.
(Says something about their priors that they believe that bed nets have saved half almost half a billion lives and they’re off by two orders of magnitude. It’s the Nobel prize in economics equivalent of believing that Michael Bloomberg could give every American $1m.)
Banerjee & Duflo ‘Foreign affairs’ article is pretty bad, and contains an interesting error, so maybe it should be removed
Interestingly, I considered removing it after reading it and being unimpressed by it, but distrusted my judgment since (I think) I saw it recommended by a reputable social scientist. The error escaped my attention, though. I will remove it. Thanks.
Banerjee & Duflo ‘Foreign affairs’ article is pretty bad, and contains an interesting error, so maybe it should be removed:
“Between 2014 and 2016, a total of 582 million insecticide-treated mosquito nets were delivered globally. Of these, 75 percent were given out through mass distribution campaigns of free bed nets, saving tens of millions of lives.”
They actually repeat this mistake in their recent book ‘Good economics for hard times’:
“The magazine Nature concluded that insecticide-treated net distributions averted 450 million malaria deaths between 2000 and 2015.”
which probably based on an old GWWC article, but they mix up deaths and cases.
(Says something about their priors that they believe that bed nets have saved half almost half a billion lives and they’re off by two orders of magnitude. It’s the Nobel prize in economics equivalent of believing that Michael Bloomberg could give every American $1m.)
Maybe include ‘Givewell’s Top Charities are increasingly hard to beat’ instead?
Interestingly, I considered removing it after reading it and being unimpressed by it, but distrusted my judgment since (I think) I saw it recommended by a reputable social scientist. The error escaped my attention, though. I will remove it. Thanks.