Friday, September 25, 2015

Want to help the poor people of the world?

TOPICS: Cost Benefit Analysis
SUMMARY: Cost-benefit analysis suggests the best way to cut world poverty-a focus on expanding trade and preschool while ending fossil-fuel subsidies. "Over the past year, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, the think tank that I direct, asked 82 leading economists to work out exactly how much good could be achieved by investing in the 169 solutions that the U.N. will endorse in a few days. We asked them, in short, to use the standard tools of economics to calculate the costs and benefits of achieving each target."
CLASSROOM APPLICATION: Students can examine whether benefit per dollar spent is an appropriate measure to determine the value on an economic program. Instructors can also present economic methodology for measuring economic benefits of social programs. Value of a statistical life is one measure of the economic benefit of a program that extends life expectancy.
QUESTIONS: 
1. (Advanced) Is media attention a useful guide for the world's problems that deserve the most urgent attention? Are campaigners, activists, and celebrities useful guides?

2. (Advanced) Is benefit per dollar spent an appropriate measure to evaluate and rank economic policies?

3. (Introductory) What criterion should be used to rank projects to aid the world's most-disadvantaged people?
Reviewed By: James Dearden, Lehigh University
Wealth of nations
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