Social returns to productivity growth

Abstract

At Open Philanthropy we aim to do the most good possible with our grantmaking. Historically, economic growth has had huge social benefits, lifting billions out of poverty and improving health outcomes around the world. This leads some to argue that accelerating economic growth, or at least productivity growth, should be a major philanthropic and social priority going forward. In this report, I describe a model that helps assess this view and inform our Global Health and Wellbeing (GHW) grantmaking. Specifically, I focus on quantitatively estimating the social returns to directly funding research and development (R&D), in a relatively simple/tractable model. I focus on R&D spending because it seems like a particularly promising way to accelerate productivity growth, but I think broadly similar conclusions would apply to other innovative activities.