Intervention report: Charter cities

Abstract

The value of charter cities can be divided into three main buckets: (1) direct benefits from providing an engine of growth that increase the incomes and wellbeing of people living in and around the city, (2) domestic indirect benefits from scaling up successful charter city policies across the host country, and (3) global indirect benefits from providing a laboratory to experiment with new policies, regulations, and governance structures. We think it is unlikely that charter cities will be more cost-effective than GiveWell top charities in terms of directly improving wellbeing.