The Copenhagen Consensus speaks to 80,000 Hours about global prioritisation

In October, Bjorn Lomborg from the Copenhagen Consensus Centre led a global priorities setting session at 80,000 Hours: Oxford in the Oxford Union. The video of the event has been uploaded by the Union.

In the session, Lomborg guides the audience through the pros and cons of different uses of development aid, and asks the audience to put them in order of priority from the perspective of maximising the welfare of the global poor. Throughout the session, live votes are taken from the audience via wifi.

About the Copenhangen Consensus

The CCC is one of the only groups in the world which does and promotes global priority setting, and they’ve been major pioneers in this area.

Every four years, they ask leading economists to make and discuss cost-benefit analyses of high potential solutions to pressing global problems in a series of challenge papers. A panel (often involving several Nobel Laureates) places the solutions in order of priority.

You can see the past challenge papers comparing the solutions to different global problems here. Although we don’t agree with all aspects of the methodology, we often find these a useful first place to turn when considering a new cause, especially to get a rough sense of how economists see the area. This is the final list of investments from 2012.

The book Global Crises, Global Solutions is a great summary of their work.