$25 billion here and $25 billion there and pretty soon we are talking about serious money. Are we?

Tyler Cowen has a nice discussion of the reactions to the Copenhagen Consensus that were published in the Winter 2007 issue of the Journal of Economic Literature.  Douglass North, Vernon Smith and Thomas Schelling were part of the team of researchers that developed the priorities.

Which side do you come down on?  (A) The Copenhagen Consensus is a step forward by reprioritizing our international aid and development activity toward tackling disease like HIV/AIDS over environmental regulations to address Global Warming; (B) The Copenhagen Consensus fails to address the practical inability of introducing an effective HIV/AIDS policy that will change behavior to reduce the spread of the disease; (C) The Copehagen Consensus suffers from the same hubris in public policy that Jeff Sachs's grand plans for ending global poverty.

Addendum: John Nye wrote me this morning to make sure that I clarified that the task of the scholars associated with the Copenhagen Consensus was not to come up with new proposals or uses for the $$$, but given the existing set of proposals and the financial constraint, how would you rank the proposals.  This closed set problem is different from the open-ended project that is associated with a full comparative institutional analysis of possible policy choices.

Comments

[Ross Williams]

While I appreciate the focus on disease over other plans, it seems that the money is going to the 'fashionable' diseases such as AIDS rather than diarrhea, tb, and others where the benefits of aid may be far greater.

Claiming ability to prevent 30 million AIDS infections by 2010 goes beyond hubris. The numbers I have access to show total HIV infections in all of Africa at 24.5 million (UNAIDS 2006 report). They would have to prevent almost every new AIDS case in Africa, if not more to meet their goal.

[Kevin Hilferty]

It seems to me (from what I've found on the CC), that with it's cost/benefit analysis, the Consensus is a step above a Sachs-like goal list. What's gotten me thinking is the risk of participating in such a closed-set problem study.

By only being able to choose from a limited set, those participating would not be given the opportunity to say how they feel certain problems should be solved. This might open the possibility for certain groups to use the statements of these notable economists out of context for arguing for spending of real money.

I realize this is possible with any study or work for well-known economists, it seems like this just opens the doors even more. You may recall the story of Hayek's last conversation with Keynes, in which Keynes said that he felt some of his pupils were "fools" and that if theyr'e ideas became "dangerous" that he would change public opinion. Hayek later said that he thought Keynes would have been against such inflation causing policies if he had survived longer, but unfortunately he did not live long enough to set the record straight.

I am not suggesting that the Copenhagen Consensus is of the same maginitude of importance, but with such famous and well-respected economists participating comes the opportunity for less sound minds to misinterpret or exploit their statements. And with highly charged and emotional issues surrounding world aid, real money and lives could be on the line and misinterpretations and exploitation of these economists' findings could have a large negative impact. But I'm just an undergrad, so what do I know...

[J Ross]

With respect to the critics who point to (B) as reason for prioritizing climate change over HIV, does this not feel a bit like the pot calling the kettle black? Do we really have a set of environmental policies that are more effective at changing human behavior than sexual ones? My guess is no.