david_reinstein

• david_reinstein 11 May 2019 20:20 UTC

  9 points

  on: A Frame­work for Think­ing about the EA La­bor Market

  Well writ­ten. I agree with most of the points. A minor quib­ble: I’m not sure I’d con­sider the wages in the non­profit sec­tor/​EA to be ‘struc­turally sup­pressed’. There are other con­sid­er­a­tions (both good and bad) limit­ing wages, par­tic­u­larly:

  1. Donors may be re­pel­led by high salaries (but this is less likely to be true in EA imho)

  2. There is a case (and sev­eral good aca­demic pa­pers ar­gu­ing this, e.g., Stein­berg, 2008; Delf­gauw and Dur, 2002 ) that a lower salary can screen for more cause-mo­ti­vated em­ploy­ees; where perfor­mance and out­comes can not be as eas­ily mon­i­tored and in­cen­tivized, in­trin­sic mo­ti­va­tion is im­por­tant. This is not to say that I think a higher salary will at­tract less-mo­ti­vated em­ploy­ees, but these can be hard to dis­t­in­guish from oth­ers. In net the gain from higher salary may not be as strong in the non­profit/​EA sec­tor.

  You note:

  The Cen­tre for Effec­tive Altru­ism is hiring a new CEO. Should it re­strict its search to can­di­dates will­ing to show their com­mit­ment by pledg­ing ev­ery­thing they earn above a mod­est amount to effec­tive char­i­ties? (Purely hy­po­thet­i­cal ques­tion, I have no rea­son to think CEA is do­ing this).

  As we dis­cussed in the doc, I sug­gest there is a mid­dle ground: Give prefer­ence to hiring peo­ple who have com­mit­ted to donate at least a cer­tain share of their in­come (and have demon­stra­bly fulfilled this pledge).

A cor­po­rate skills bake sale?

• david_reinstein 13 Apr 2019 14:58 UTC

  1 point

  on: Salary Ne­go­ti­a­tion for Earn­ing to Give

  How would you en­sure peo­ple stick to their promise to donate and don’t just use the ad­vice/​time for non-earn­ing-to-give causes.

  1. We could offer this only to those who already have a pub­lic ver­ified record of sub­stan­tial EA giv­ing.

  This would seem to be a rea­son­able filter/​screen on hon­esty. It is pos­si­ble that such peo­ple would take ad­van­tage and not keep the promise to donate the ad­di­tional amount, but it seems un­likely. Per­haps there are peo­ple with a con­se­quen­tial­ist ethic who want to help effec­tively and donate a lot, but are nonethe­less will­ing to be dishon­est and swin­dle fel­low-EA-ers, but it doesn’t seem ter­ribly pos­si­ble.

  Note that even if peo­ple did not con­sis­tently donate the ad­di­tional ne­go­ti­ated salary, this would still serve as a ‘re­ward’ for pub­lic EA donors, per­haps en­courag­ing oth­ers to fol­low suit.

  2. I would sug­gest that the ne­go­tia­tor/​EA spon­sor ask them to state their ex­pected salary and salary range and then af­ter­wards to state the amount they were able to ne­go­ti­ate and the amount they had donated. Peo­ple will prob­a­bly be less will­ing to de­fault on their promise if do­ing so re­quires ex­plic­itly stat­ing this or ly­ing about it.

• david_reinstein 13 Apr 2019 14:52 UTC

  3 points

  on: Salary Ne­go­ti­a­tion for Earn­ing to Give

  Trig­ger warn­ing: con­tains some aca­demic eco­nomics palaver and self-pro­mo­tion.

  Clas­si­cal eco­nomics arguments

  The case (as in ‘no Lean Sea­son’) seems to de­pend on in­effi­cient be­hav­ior/​job ap­pli­cants leav­ing money on the table. If there were such great gains to ne­go­ti­at­ing why wouldn’t the ap­pli­cants always hire a ne­go­tia­tor? This lends some cre­dence to those say­ing that there is a cost in terms of re­scinded offers. In some sense, this would mean that if the EA com­mu­nity offered free ne­go­ti­at­ing ser­vices in ex­change for such a pledge, they would be gam­bling with the ap­pli­cant’s funds.

  *So what might be the case to still jus­tify this?*

  Be­hav­ioral and mod­ern eco­nomics/​psy­chol­ogy

  1. Psy­chol­ogy/​bi­ases in giving

  This is not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing. If the ap­pli­cant is will­ing to take such a risk, this might be a good way to in­di­rectly elicit dona­tions. It also re­lates to the give if you win mode I have been re­search­ing.

  2. Bi­ases in negotiating

  This also might be a ‘nudge to­wards ne­go­ti­at­ing’; per­haps peo­ple are re­luc­tant to stick their neck out and ne­go­ti­ate for them­selves be­cause of some in­trin­sic psy­cholog­i­cal bias, but they might be will­ing to do so with the sup­port of the EA com­mu­nity, and know­ing that it would lead to helping effec­tive causes, well bring­ing them some pos­i­tive rep­u­ta­tion in the pro­cess.

  3. Psy­chol­ogy and ‘bi­ases’ in volunteering

  This may un­lock the vol­un­teer ser­vices of ex­pert ne­go­tia­tors in a par­tic­u­larly effec­tive way. Be­cause of the sig­nal­ing benefits (it’s more pub­lic!), cor­po­rate re­wards, and in­ter­nal­ised feel­ing of im­pact peo­ple may be more will­ing to vol­un­teer than to donate the equiv­a­lent amount in terms of the value of the time. This re­lates to my pro­posal for the Cor­po­rate bake sale.

  4. Syn­er­gies en­abled by co­op­er­a­tion be­tween altruists

  In Prin­ci­pal-Agent prob­lems there is a well-known in­effi­ciency that re­sults from the com­bi­na­tion of hid­den in­for­ma­tion and ei­ther limited-li­a­bil­ity or asym­met­ric risk-prefer­ences. This is es­sen­tially why economists be­lieve (and have some ev­i­dence) that real es­tate agents usu­ally get a lower price when they sell a house for some­one else vs. their own house.

  How­ever, if the ne­go­tia­tor here is EA-al­igned, their in­ter­ests will bet­ter con­verge, and there is an effi­ciency gain to be had here. (A bunch of pa­pers make this case … about the effi­ciency gains re­sult­ing from al­tru­ism on one side or the other, in­clud­ing my own pa­per on the the­o­ret­i­cal ar­gu­ment for ‘fair trade’.

Em­ployee Giv­ing in­cen­tives: A shared database… rele­vant for EA job-seek­ers and activists

• david_reinstein 29 Nov 2017 11:00 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Peter_Hurford's comment on: Wiki/​Sur­vey: Ex­pe­riences in fundrais­ing/​con­vinc­ing peo­ple/​or­gani­sa­tions to sup­port EA causes

  Thank you; I had not seen this be­fore. It is very helpful and I will strive to in­cor­po­rate this.

Wiki/​Sur­vey: Ex­pe­riences in fundrais­ing/​con­vinc­ing peo­ple/​or­gani­sa­tions to sup­port EA causes

• david_reinstein 5 Jun 2017 12:00 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: DardanBastiaan's comment on: Give if you win (in­no­va­tion in fundrais­ing)

  For banks and big cor­po­ra­tions to want to join, there prob­a­bly needs to be a greater sense of as­surance that their sign­ing up will ac­tu­ally lead to the pub­lic­ity you sug­gest there would be.

  I agree. It would be good to think of ways to line up en­dorse­ment and pos­i­tive pub­lic­ity in ad­vance. Still, I think it de­pends on the cost-benefit calcu­la­tion. If they can try this with­out much effort or risk, they might be will­ing to do so in­ter­nally and roll out the PR grad­u­ally.

  That in mind, it’s plau­si­ble that 1. can­cer char­i­ties would do bet­ter than an in­vest­ment in some­thing west­ern­ers aren’t per­son­ally af­fected by, such as schis­to­so­mi­a­sis, and 2. that one big check to one big or­ga­ni­za­tion will gar­ner more at­ten­tion than many checks to a myr­iad of or­ga­ni­za­tions.

  Do­mes­tic char­i­ties and char­i­ties like CRUK will typ­i­cally tend to do bet­ter in gen­eral, I sus­pect. How­ever, i. in­creas­ing the over­all vol­ume of giv­ing should in­crease effec­tive giv­ing at least pro­por­tion­ally and ii. more so if we fo­cus on this in the pro­mo­tions and work with EA sup­port­ers in or­gani­sa­tions.

  Devel­op­ing ap­proaches to get peo­ple out­side of the EA move­ment to sup­port EA char­i­ties is a sep­a­rate and very im­por­tant one (e.g., Deloitte could have at least one in­ter­na­tional/​effec­tive char­ity part­ner­ship. I’m work­ing on this as well (I hope to up­date soon about the wiki and other things peo­ple can en­gage in.)

  I would be very keen to work with a big, known char­ity. It may not be the high­est-rated EA char­ity, but it would be good to part­ner with one that is at least some­where on the EA spec­trum even if not perfect (an Ox­fam, MSF, Comic Relief, etc).

Give if you win (in­no­va­tion in fundrais­ing)

• david_reinstein 24 May 2017 17:19 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Toby_Ord's comment on: The value of money go­ing to differ­ent groups

  Thank you Toby. The ‘prefer­ence over gam­bles’ as a way of mea­sur­ing diminish­ing marginal util­ity will de­pend strongly on the ex­pected util­ity max­i­miza­tion as­sump­tion; in prac­tice, it could be vuln­er­a­ble to refer­ence-point effects I be­lieve. (Also the log­a­r­ith­mic util­ity func­tion is ob­vi­ously an im­posed para­met­ric as­sump­tion, but a good start.)

  Still, these ap­proaches seem rea­son­able, es­pe­cially in­so­far as broadly similar re­sults come from vary­ing con­texts.

• david_reinstein 24 May 2017 17:14 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Jon_Behar's comment on: Are Giv­ing Games a bet­ter way to teach philan­thropy?

  Thank you. It sounds some­what similar to some eco­nomics ex­per­i­ments in­volv­ing char­ity that I have seen, but of course with a differ­ent goal in mind. I will look into this—I am cu­ri­ous also about the ev­i­dence one might col­lect from such games, es­pe­cially about which ar­gu­ments peo­ple have found con­vinc­ing, and which ap­proaches have con­vinced peo­ple to choose the more effec­tive char­i­ties.

• david_reinstein 20 May 2017 18:29 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: jpaddison's comment on: The value of money go­ing to differ­ent groups

  I like this ar­ti­cle and I agree with the ar­gu­ment in prin­ci­ple, but I’d like to see a bit more in­for­ma­tion pre­sented about how the elas­tic­ity pa­ram­e­ter is es­ti­mated.

  In other words, what data has been used to com­pute this pa­ram­e­ter? Ex­per­i­ments where peo­ple make choices among differ­ent lot­ter­ies? Im­plicit choices where peo­ple make trade­offs in­volv­ing risk? Stated prefer­ences over com­par­i­sons of so­cietal dis­tri­bu­tions of wealth?

• david_reinstein 20 May 2017 18:23 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Peter_Hurford's comment on: The value of money go­ing to differ­ent groups

  That page is good, but it would be bet­ter if they could give an ap­ples-to-ap­ples com­par­i­son. There must be do­mes­tic US char­i­ties that aim to save lives do­mes­ti­cally, from which a ‘cost per life saved’ es­ti­mate could be drawn. … Or a de­vel­op­ing coun­try char­ity that pro­vides a similar ser­vice as the US char­i­ties men­tioned (ed­u­ca­tion, neo-na­tal care, etc), from which many more peo­ple could be serverd for the same $.

• david_reinstein 20 May 2017 18:17 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Zeke_Sherman's comment on: Open Thread #36

  Mov­ing to a low-in­come for­eign coun­try could in­di­rectly help the peo­ple in that coun­try, if you buy goods and pay taxes there, cre­ate jobs, etc.

• david_reinstein 20 May 2017 18:15 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: jpaddison's comment on: Open Thread #36

  Not sure what a DAF stands for. On re­tire­ment, buy­ing an in­fla­tion-ad­justed an­nu­ity could be a good of as­sur­ing you can donate a par­tic­u­lar amount in your will while en­sur­ing a steady in­come un­til you die.

• david_reinstein 20 May 2017 18:12 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: jpaddison's comment on: Model­ling the Good Food In­sti­tute—Oxford Pri­ori­ti­sa­tion Project

  My thoughts, apolo­gies if I am just re­it­er­at­ing what you already know.

  It seems like there are 3 very difficult things to get a bal­l­park es­ti­mate of:

  1. The like­li­hood of de­vel­op­ing a suc­cess­ful fake chicken as a func­tion of the num­ber of in­vest­ment dol­lars. This seems like a sci­en­tific/​tech­ni­cal ques­tion. The im­pact-driven EA in­vestor will want to know the im­pact of his/​her $1 on this prob­a­bil­ity, i.e., the slope of this given the likely level of other’s in­vest­ment. I.e., if I ex­pect oth­ers will in­vest $1 mil­lion, I con­sider how the prob­a­bil­ity of a chicken differs when in­vest­ment in­creases from $1 mil­lion to $1 mil­lion +1. (Or to $1 mil­lion + 1*lev­er­age mul­ti­plier, see be­low).

  2. The mul­ti­plier effect of a (donated) in­vest­ment dol­lar, in­clud­ing both a. The lev­er­age of a dol­lar (how much more you could bor­row at a rea­son­able in­ter­est rate with an ad­di­tional dol­lar of equity col­lat­eral); I think this could be es­ti­mated un­der some rea­son­able as­sump­tions b. The effect of an ad­di­tional in­vest­ment dol­lar on sub­se­quent in­vestors/​al­tru­ists will­ing­ness to in­vest. This seems like the hard­est thing to calcu­late, and it is not com­pletely clear whether that effect should even be pos­i­tive. This is the ‘seed money’ ques­tion. It might be that when al­tru­ists see a greater amount of in­vest­ment already, they see their own con­tri­bu­tion as less vi­tal, and in­vest less.

  3. The likely over­all dis­tri­bu­tion of to­tal amount in­vested; the $1 mil­lion in the ex­am­ple in part 1.

• david_reinstein 20 May 2017 17:55 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: jpaddison's comment on: Are Giv­ing Games a bet­ter way to teach philan­thropy?

  Briefly, how do you define/​de­scribe ‘Giv­ing Games’?