Top Posts
European governments and entities cut several billion in development funding
EU - €2.6 billion shifted from development towards border management/migration
Germany - €2 billion cut
France - €800 million cut
Charity Entrepreneurship are rebranding to Ambitious Impact (AIM)
They also have a combined application (April 14th deadline) where you can fill out one form to apply for their charity entrepreneurship, research and for-profit programs at the same time
Unacknowledged problems with anti-malaria bed nets are causing a rise in malaria
Nick Laing - Can we help individual people cost-effectively? Our trial with three sick kids
DevEx - The 4 most important calls for global health funds in 2024
WHO, GAVI, IDA and the Pandemic Fund
Events
6th March - Global Development Professionals Meetup (London) - brainstorming charity ideas - contact david@effectivealtruism.uk
6th March - Q&A on Market Shaping for Impact with Leah Rosenzweig, Development Innovation Lab (Virtual) - Probably Good
7th March - Aim for a career that matters (Virtual) - AIM, with Joey Savoie
8th March - STEG Virtual Course on "Data in Macro Development" (for econ PhDs and faculty)
14th March - Our Top Charity Ideas in Global Health and Development (Virtual) - AIM
18th-19th May - EA for Christians Conference in D.C.
31st May - 2nd June - EAG: London
Development Finance
IMF - Ghanaian economy is showing signs of stabilisation
VoxDev - The investment returns to infrastructure provision
Asian Development Bank to raise share of climate loans to 55% by 2030
World Bank group prepares major overhaul to guarantee business
Andrew Herscowitz on how the U.S. DFC has too many restrictions that hinder the ability to have impact
Speeding up project approvals, and streamlining IDA ahead of its replenishment are top priorities for the World Bank president
Ken Opalo - Is there an "Africa penalty" in sovereign ratings by credit agencies?
ADB strengthens sanitation system in Indonesia with $420m loan
World Bank group expands its crisis toolkit to empower countries amid intertwined crises
Tristan Reed - Productivity as a guide for industrial policies
Economic Growth
Podcast with Kartik Akileswaran and Jonathan Mazumdar on Growth Teams and structural transformation
The direct costs of non-tariff barriers in the East African Community is estimated at $16m
Karthik Tadepalli - Labor markets in LMICs
GPI - A pro-growth anti-corruption strategy
Rachel Glennerster with thoughts for people interested in the evidence on how to help low income countries grow
Noah Smith with thoughts on how Pakistan could reach middle-income status
Ken Opalo - What next for Equatorial Guinea after oil?
Yaw Asamoah - Ethiopia's Economy in the Modern Day (2000-Present)
RCTs & Evidence
Nature - Optimally generate policy-based evidence before scaling
J-PAL - Celebrating a decade of the RCT Registry
Linda Kinstler - How poor Kenyans became economists’ guinea pigs
‘Replicability & Generalisability’: Applying a discount factor to cost-effectiveness estimates
Power to detect what? Considerations for Planning and Evaluating Sample Size
Training Policymakers in Econometrics - Training junior ministers in the school of thought associated with the credibility revolution increases demand for and responsiveness to causal evidence
Ken Opalo - Academic research and Policy research are two different things
Foreign Aid
CGD - The 2024-2025 Replenishment Traffic Jam: Are We Headed for a Pileup?
Celeste Brubaker - How USAID can scale an evidence-based approach
DevEx Pro - Which sectors received the most aid in 2022?
Wellbeing
Alexander Loewi - Critical Failures in the World Happiness Report's Model of National Satisfaction
HLI - Policies for wellbeing: A brief scoping review
High life satisfaction reported among small-scale societies with low incomes
Spikes in air pollution may increase suicide risk
Agriculture
UN agriculture fund bets big on innovation to improve food security
The International Growth Centre and Aceli Africa have launched the Agri-SME Evidence Fund focused on policy-relevant research at the intersection of agriculture, finance and SMEs
Lead
Lead Exposure Elimination Project - 2023 in Review - successful follow up study in Malawi and expanding to work in 25 countries
The Examination - Hundreds of children in the US were poisoned with lead last year. Records show how the contamination went unnoticed across borders
Lee Crawfurd - New Data on Causal Effects of Lead on Learning in Developing Countries
Malaria
Gates Foundation funds African scientists searching for TB and malaria cure
Malaria Know More: Alex Tabarrok on Treating Malaria Vaccination Distributions as an “Emergency”
Dylan Matthews - Why would anyone be against lifesaving malaria bed nets?
Vaccines & Pandemics
Max Roser - The global fight against polio - how far have we come?
80,000 Hours - Anonymous answers - What are the biggest misconceptions about biosecurity and pandemic risk?
NBER - Quantifying the Social Value of a Universal COVID-19 Vaccine and Incentivising Its Development
Single-dose dengue vaccine protects 79.6% of those vaccinated
Cholera vaccine shortage reaches worst point yet with at least 16 countries dealing with outbreaks
Dylan Scott - Should Big Pharma pay poor countries for finding new diseases?
Keller Scholl - I was deliberately infected with Zika to test a vaccine. Human challenge trials like my one could save millions of lives by developing prophylactics more quickly
Jacob Trefethen - How to make $100 million in revenue before selling anything - looking at Tropical Disease Priority Review Vouchers
Effective Giving
Head of TED Chris Anderson signs new “Wealth Pledge” to give 2.5% of wealth to high-impact charities each year
GWWC - Comparing charities: How big is the difference?
Seeking applicants and funders for the Mental Health Funding Circle - March 31st
Effective Giving Belgium has been set up - Effectief Geven
Democracy & Conflict
Introducing the Effektiv Spenden "Defending Democracy" fund
Dylan Scott - From Gaza to Sudan, conflict is driving a rise in hunger worldwide
The Economist - Where democracy is most at risk
Humanitarian Protection Initiative is a collaboration between J-PAL and IPA aiming to generate and share new evidence to inform policy and practice to effectively improve protection of conflict-affected populations
Migration & Displacement
Jason Wendle - Betting on Migration for Impact
Facilitating international labor migration via a digital platform
Nigerian nurses protesting new rules to prevent them working abroad for two years after completing their training
Public Health
Lessons from Peru to reduce under-5 mortality: understanding program implementation and context
DevEx Pro - African Union plans to pool resources to unify $50B pharma market
CGD - The Economics of Antibiotic Resistance
Javier Guzman - What Can Value for Money in Health Care Learn from the Regulatory World?
Clear Solutions on their ORS & Zinc distribution pilot
David Roodman - Long-term Effects of India's Childhood Immunisation Program on Earnings and Consumption Expenditure: Comment
KT Hobbs, Mo Putera & Sophia Seidler - Improving Access to Palliative Care in Sub-Saharan Africa
Environment
Tod Moss - Why Isn’t Solar Scaling in Africa?
Nat Bullard annual presentation on the state of decarbonisation told with climate, capital markets, technology and sector data
Rachel Glennerster & Seema Jayachandran - Rich Countries Should Increase Their Spending on Green Projects in Poor Countries
How India electrified 45% of its railway network in five years
Innovation
The University of Bern has launched a program, backed by 250,000 Swiss francs, to pay reviewers to root out mistakes in papers, starting with psychology
Accelerator For Innovation & Research Funding Experimentation is a new collaboration aiming to boost institutional capacity for experiments with funding
Stuart Buck - Why Are We Screwing Over Researchers Who Make Innovative Discoveries? - the University of Pennsylvania has made $1.2 billion in royalties from patents on Katalin Karikó’s work after forcing her out
Matt Clancy - Boosting innovation by teaching people to be tech entrepreneurs?
Charities
From salt intake reduction to labor migration: Announcing top ideas for the AIM 2024 CE Incubation Program
Nikita Patel reflecting on her last 6 and a half years at Fortify Health as she steps down
An interview with Klau Chmielowska, co-founder and co-executive director of Lafiya Nigeria
Jobs
Dexis - Economist, USAID Private Sector Engagement Modernization Contract (Washington DC)
LEEP - Program Manager
Charity Entrepreneurship - Director of Outreach
GiveWell
One For The World - Executive Director
President
Researcher
Comms Director
Grants
Open Philanthropy have made several grants recently worth $22.7m
GiveWell-Recommended Charities
$9.2m - Evidence Action — Iron and Folic Acid Supplementation in India
Global Health & Wellbeing - $16m
$3.6m - International Vaccine Institute — Strep A Vaccine Global Consortium
$2.2m - University of Bonn — Influenza Drug Development
$1.4m - University of Washington — Tuberculosis Research
$1.2m - Washington University in St. Louis — Research on Cryptosporidium Hominis
$1m - 1Day Sooner
$780k - Purdue University — Imatinib Trial for Drug-Resistant Malaria
$330k - Princeton University — Research on Hepatitis B Variant
$320k - Obafemi Awolowo University — Atorvastatin Combination Trial for Tuberculosis
$220k - Princeton University — Transgenic Mice for Hepatitis B Research
$160k - University of Southern California — Linezolid Trial for Syphilis
$140k - Columbia University — Regulatory Affairs Position
$50k - The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease — Conference Scholarships
$25k - Global Rice Research Foundation — Food Security Fellowships
Innovation Policy
$1.2m - Economic Innovation Group — High-Skilled Immigration Research and Advocacy
$200k - NBER — Innovation Policy Working Group
Global Aid Policy
$160k - Dalberg Media — Aid Advocacy Coalition in Denmark
$110k - Center for Global Development — USAID Staff Placement
EA (Global Health and Wellbeing)
$320k - Magnify Mentoring
$100k - Kurtis Lockhart, to help build a campus for the African School of Economics in Fumba, Zanzibar
$100k - 1DaySooner
Other Causes
Cina Lawson & Rory Stewart - A Global Cash-Transfer Fund Could End Extreme Poverty
Dylan Scott - Car crashes are killing too many young Africans like Kelvin Kiptum.
Do ultra-poor graduation programmes build resilience against droughts?
Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel - What does Recent Evidence Tell Us are “Smart Buys” for Improving Learning in LMICs?
A new study has discovered a single human antibody that protects against venom from numerous dangerous snakes
Effective Altruism
Dustin Moskovitz - The Long Journey to Doing Good Better
EA in Arabic has been launched
Other Links
DevEx - 24 global development organisations to watch in 2024 (with summaries)
Open Philanthropy - Social science research we'd like to see on global health and wellbeing
Hugh Irving & Jessica Wen - How Engineers can Contribute to Global Heath and Development
New Open Philanthropy Grantmaking Program: Forecasting (Including global development)
Berk Özler - Should we evaluate more algorithms?
Good News
13 cases of guinea worm reported in 2023 – Lowest level since the eradication campaign began
WHO - Great Progress Made in Eliminating Trans Fat - From 6% protected 5 years ago to 46% of the world's population today - expecting to save 183,000 lives every year
Guyana reports decline in filaria, leprosy and TB cases
Cambodia on track to eradicate malaria by 2025