Global priorities research
Research on how to do as much good as possible
This profile is tailored towards students studying economics and philosophy, however we expect there to be valuable open research questions that could be pursued by students in other disciplines.
Why is this a pressing problem?
How can we allocate limited resources to do as much good as possible? Are there global problems that haven’t yet been identified? What are the crucial considerations that could radically change our understanding of what it means to improve the world? And what methodologies should we use to answer these questions?
Research that contributes to answering these questions could make efforts to improve the world much more effective. Global priorities research is a relatively new, interdisciplinary field focused on doing this. It draws on a wide range of disciplines, including economics, philosophy, history and psychology, and encompasses a spectrum from more foundational to more applied research.
Foundational global priorities research explores the high level questions raised by the aim of doing the most good possible, and tries to develop methodologies to answer these questions. For example, research could explore how best to account for the long-term and indirect effects of our actions, or whether we are living at a highly influential time in history (which would make the actions we take today particularly important from the perspective of improving the future).
More applied research draws on the understanding developed by foundational research to assess how global problems should be prioritised, depending on their severity and how promising the possible interventions seem. This profile focuses on more foundational research questions, however you could do applied research aimed at quantifying the importance of the problems featured in many of our other profiles and estimating how promising interventions are.
You can read a longer introduction to this research direction from 80000 Hours here and see here for their update on why this research area seems particularly high priority.
Watch William MacAskill’s introduction to the goals and research of the Global Priorities Institute below.
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Research papers
Aschenbrenner, Leopold (2019) Existential Risk and Growth
Buchak, Lara (2022) How Should Risk and Ambiguity Affect Our Charitable Giving?
Greaves, Hilary & Toby Ord (2017) Moral Uncertainty about Population Axiology, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy
Greaves, Hilary & William MacAskill, The Case for Strong Longtermism
MacAskill, William (2020) Are We Living at the Hinge of History?
Mogensen, Andreas (2022) Respect for Others’ Risk Attitudes and the Long-Run Future
Trammell, Philip (2021) Dynamic Public Good Provision under Time Preference Heterogeneity: Theory and Applications to Philanthropy
Wilkinson, Hayden (2022) Market Harms and Market Benefits, Philosophy and Public Affairs
You could also explore the research done at the Global Priorities Institute. The Global priorities research for economists syllabus also has many suggestions for further reading.
Organisations focused on foundational global priorities research:
Organisations focused more on applied global priorities research:
Contributors: This profile was published 9/1/2023. Thanks to Hayden Wilkinson and David Thorstad for their helpful feedback. All errors remain our own. Learn more about how we create our profiles.
