Hits-based development: funding developing-country economists

Abstract

So far, the effective altruist strategy for global poverty has followed a high-certainty, low-reward approach. GiveWell mostly looks at charities with a strong evidence base, such as bednets and cash transfers. But there’s also a low-certainty, high-reward approach: promote catch-up economic growth. Poverty is strongly correlated with economic development (urbanization, industrialization, etc), so encouraging development would have large effects on poverty. Whereas cash transfers have a large probability of a small effect, promoting growth has a small probability of a large effect. (In general, we should diversify across high- and low-risk strategies.) In short, can we do “hits-based development”?[1]