I agree with the broad thrust of your comment that there’s a tradeoff between guaranteed performance vs potentially higher impact stuff.
That said, I would push back on two points:
(1) With respect to our work being “seriously overoptimistic, especially when it comes to predicting the success and ease of lobbying efforts against considerable opposition.” I think some of our earlier/shallower CEAs definitely do suffer from that, but our deep CEAs are (a) highly comprehensive, factoring in a multiple of relevant temporal/epistemic discounts; and (b) are far more sceptical of advocacy efforts (e.g. we think there is a 6% chance of success for sodium reduction advocacy in a single country over 3 years. i.e. if you did 48 country-years of lobbying you’ll get one win). Amongst the various considerations informing this estimate is, of course, the reality of industry pushback.
(b) I disagree to a limited but fairly significant extent, on the notion that such work has limited room for more funding. Scaling works differently in advocacy than in direct delivery. You pay more to buy increased chances of success (e.g. the difference between funding a small NGO vs hiring a professional lobbying outfit vs hiring ex-government officials to lobby for you). Of course, diminishing marginal returns apply (as opposed to economies of scale in direct delivery—though in the long run, there’s always DMR as we work our way down the list of priority countries).
Hi Jason,
I agree with the broad thrust of your comment that there’s a tradeoff between guaranteed performance vs potentially higher impact stuff.
That said, I would push back on two points:
(1) With respect to our work being “seriously overoptimistic, especially when it comes to predicting the success and ease of lobbying efforts against considerable opposition.” I think some of our earlier/shallower CEAs definitely do suffer from that, but our deep CEAs are (a) highly comprehensive, factoring in a multiple of relevant temporal/epistemic discounts; and (b) are far more sceptical of advocacy efforts (e.g. we think there is a 6% chance of success for sodium reduction advocacy in a single country over 3 years. i.e. if you did 48 country-years of lobbying you’ll get one win). Amongst the various considerations informing this estimate is, of course, the reality of industry pushback.
(b) I disagree to a limited but fairly significant extent, on the notion that such work has limited room for more funding. Scaling works differently in advocacy than in direct delivery. You pay more to buy increased chances of success (e.g. the difference between funding a small NGO vs hiring a professional lobbying outfit vs hiring ex-government officials to lobby for you). Of course, diminishing marginal returns apply (as opposed to economies of scale in direct delivery—though in the long run, there’s always DMR as we work our way down the list of priority countries).