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this is: Growth and the case against randomista development, published by HaukeHillebrandt, John G. Halstead on the effective altruism forum.

Update, 3/8/2021: I (Hauke) gave a talk at Effective Altruism Global on this post:

Summary

Randomista development (RD) is a form of development economics which evaluates and promotes interventions that can be tested by randomised controlled trials (RCTs). It is exemplified by GiveWell (which primarily works in health) and the randomista movement in economics (which primarily works in economic development).

Here we argue for the following claims, which we believe to be quite weak:

Prominent economists make plausible arguments which suggest that research on and advocacy for economic growth in low- and middle-income countries is more cost-effective than the things funded by proponents of randomista development.

Effective altruists have devoted too little attention to these arguments.

Assessing the soundness of these arguments should be a key focus for current generation-focused effective altruists over the next few years.

We hope to start a conversation on these questions, and potentially to cause a major reorientation within EA.

We also believe the following stronger claims:

4. Improving health is not the best way to increase growth.

5. A ~4 person-year research effort will find donation opportunities working on economic growth in LMICs which are substantially better than GiveWell’s top charities from a current generation human welfare-focused point of view.

However, economic growth is not all that matters. GDP misses many crucial determinants of human welfare, including leisure time, inequality, foregone consumption from investment, public goods, social connection, life expectancy, and so on. A top priority for effective altruists should be to assess the best way to increase human welfare outside of the constraints of randomista development, i.e. allowing intervention that have not or cannot be tested by RCTs.

We proceed as follows:

We define randomista development and contrast it with research and advocacy for growth-friendly policies in low- and middle-income countries.

We show that randomista development is overrepresented in EA, and that, in contradistinction, research on and advocacy for growth-friendly economic policy (we refer to this as growth throughout) is underrepresented

We then show why some prominent economists believe that, a priori, growth is much more effective than most RD interventions.

We present a quantitative model that tries to formalize these intuitions and allows us to compare global development interventions with economic growth interventions. The model suggests that under plausible assumptions a hypothetical growth intervention can be thousands of times more cost-effective than typical RD interventions such as cash-transfers. However, when these assumptions are relaxed and compared to the very good RD interventions, growth interventions are on a similar level of effectiveness as RD interventions.

We consider various possible objections and qualifications to our argument.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Stefan Schubert, Stephen Clare, Greg Lewis, Michael Wiebe, Sjir Hoeijmakers, Johannes Ackva, Gregory Thwaites, Will MacAskill, Aidan Goth, Sasha Cooper, and Carl Shulman for comments. Any mistakes are our own. Opinions are ours, not those of our employers.

Marinella Capriati at GiveWell commented on this piece, and the piece does not represent her views or those of GiveWell.

1. Defining Randomista Development

We define randomista development (RD) as an approach to development economics which investigates, evaluates and recommends only interventions which can be tested by randomised controlled trials (RCTs).

RD can take low-risk or more “hits-based” forms. Effective altruists have especially focused on the low-risk for...