Great post! I’m in touch with a researcher who’s working on an academic project in the UK who would like to have a quick chat with any of the folks in the team. Just sent a message on the RP site, but if you’re happy to be put in touch, feel free to DM or comment here.
So-Low Growth
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The second/third link are dead. Would you mind re-posting it please?
Isn’t there a strong motivation for following-up with a conference introducing these professors to EA?
Fwiw, I have a set of slides by a very high profile growth economist (top 10 in the world in terms of citations in growth) on why this paper may be incorrect. They have a theoretical model with testable empirical implications.
If anyone is interested in collaborating on this, I’d be potentially interested in having early chats.
Ah frustrating! I’m surprised Tyler didn’t say yes, given your previous blog posts.
Random thought—maybe it’s worth applying to EAF/LTFF for replicating EA specific papers?
Michael, I love your work (blog). Other than FTX, have you tried other avenues for funding this?
Nice suggestion—and good to see you here on the EAF Ryan!
Happy to see this initiative!
These are great Gavin.
It’s been a while since I worked on global development issues (largely focusing on NTDs back in 2014⁄15) but did Farmer not also help popularise the biosocial approach (which I thought had a large impact) ? No mention of ‘biosocial’ on the wiki page though.
Thanks Gavin!
I think it’s this paper http://evavivalt.com/wp-content/uploads/Weighing-the-Evidence.pdf. Fwiw, all of Eva’s papers are worth reading!
Sidenote—love your work and WiP (I’m also part of the PS community). Hope to see you on the EAF again!
Actually I could be incorrect. I think Eva Vivalt has a paper on this (no time to dig up right now).
One indirect advantage of RCTs is that I’d guess (I’d imagine this has been tested somewhere) that they are easier to understand compared to other causal inference methods. Maybe that makes it easier to pitch to people who aren’t trained in statistics (often policy makers).
Not sure of this though...
Fwiw, I’d imagine you are all less succumb to weighting other evaluators negative points (different interests at play to journal reviewers) - but still may be a bias here.
Peaked my curiosity, what sort of clever thing?
The sharing of information can—sometimes—lead to more conservative funding due to people weighting other peoples’ weak points greater than their strong points. See here for a really fascinating paper in the economics of science: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4107
I like the idea but then a potential counter-point would be we should just simple expand Oxford’s GPI/FHI. Both of these are within Oxford, which adds a lot of prestige/credibility etc.
I think the counter-point here is that currently EAs publish in more mainstream journals, allowing them to gain exposure to a wide audience. Having a niche EA journal (even if buying a popular one and changing it) may reduce the audience/respectability (i.e. considered fringe etc.).
IIRC, OpenPhil are funding EAish academics to produce online courses. I think the old Peter Singer one on Coursera/EDx did pretty well.
Thanks for the quick response Kevin. Haha, so in my original question I was going to say ‘with the exclusion of the work of Chad Jones’, i.e. the intersection of growth theory and EA/longtermism, which seem quite clear to me.
I would be interested in hearing about the other presenters: (Ben) Jones, Azoulay, Williams, Reenen, etc.
Re-read this again just now and truly is a tremendous piece!