To disagree slightly with my co-author here… As I understand you, you are conditioning on A being able to expand capacity.
I think what is going on is that you are asking “Should we give to Organization A or Organization B?”. I think your analysis is roughly right as a response to this question. We are not claiming that Organization A is more effective than Organization B.
Instead, what we’re asking at this stage in the paper is more like “Is the total counterfactual impact of giving to Organization A steeply declining at any point?”. We think that the answer is probably “No” for the reasons given. But note that this doesn’t imply that one should always give to Organization A: if A starts off more effective, but returns gradually diminish, then there will still be some point at which it makes sense to start donating to organization B.
Overall, I think there isn’t a disagreement here (although I may have misunderstood), but this is a sign that we should have been clearer in this section—I’ll think about a rewrite.
To disagree slightly with my co-author here… As I understand you, you are conditioning on A being able to expand capacity.
I think what is going on is that you are asking “Should we give to Organization A or Organization B?”. I think your analysis is roughly right as a response to this question. We are not claiming that Organization A is more effective than Organization B.
Instead, what we’re asking at this stage in the paper is more like “Is the total counterfactual impact of giving to Organization A steeply declining at any point?”. We think that the answer is probably “No” for the reasons given. But note that this doesn’t imply that one should always give to Organization A: if A starts off more effective, but returns gradually diminish, then there will still be some point at which it makes sense to start donating to organization B.
Overall, I think there isn’t a disagreement here (although I may have misunderstood), but this is a sign that we should have been clearer in this section—I’ll think about a rewrite.
Ah, yes. Agreed. Thanks for the clarification.