2023 Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Changelog - GiveWell

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This is a technical changelog from GiveWell, a charity evaluator focused on global health; it is not directly related to AI safety but may be relevant as a model for transparent, iterative quantitative evaluation practices.

Metadata

Importance: 18/100organizational reportreference

Summary

This page documents all changes made to GiveWell's cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) models throughout 2023, covering updates across multiple versions. Changes include corrections to calculation errors, updated methodology for vaccination coverage, revised counterfactual values, and adjustments for specific country contexts such as Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Key Points

•Documents versioned updates to GiveWell's CEA models in 2023, providing transparency into how estimates evolve over time.
•Version 4 (August 2023) updated New Incentives CEA with Nigerian state data, revised death probability estimates, and cost-per-infant figures.
•Version 3 (June 2023) corrected leverage and funging calculation errors in Sightsavers CEA and updated AMF CEA for DRC.
•Updates reflect iterative refinement of key inputs like baseline vaccination coverage, net spacing, and counterfactual value of Global Fund spending.
•Serves as an audit trail for GiveWell's quantitative charity evaluation methodology, supporting reproducibility and accountability.

Cited by 1 page

Page	Type	Quality
EA and Longtermist Wins and Losses	--	53.0

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 2023 Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Changelog

 
 
 
 

 
 
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 This page provides details about changes that were made to our cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) in 2023. Each changelog entry represents our understanding at the time the change was made. For past versions of our CEA, see this page .

 
 
 Table of Contents

 

 
 
 
 
 Version 4 — Published August 16, 2023 
 
 
 
 
 Change 1: Added remaining Nigerian states and updated probability of death estimates in our New Incentives CEA 
 

 
 
 Change 2: Moved the "net spacing adjustment" to the "Number of people covered" section in the Against Malaria Foundation CEA 
 

 
 
 Change 3: Updated the counterfactual value of Global Fund spending 
 

 
 
 Change 4: Updated our methodology for calculating baseline vaccination coverage and treatment effect in the New Incentives CEA 
 

 
 
 Change 5: Updated the cost per infant estimate in our New Incentives CEA 
 

 
 

 

 
 
 Version 3 — Published June 13, 2023 
 
 
 
 
 Change 1: Corrected errors in the leverage and funging calculations in our Sightsavers CEA 
 

 
 
 Change 2: Updated the supplemental adjustment for medical costs averted by life-saving interventions 
 

 
 
 Change 3: Updated the leverage and funging adjustment in the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) CEA for the Democratic Republic of the Congo 
 

 
 
 Change 4: Updated the net spacing adjustment in the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) CEA for the Democratic Republic of the Congo 
 

 
 
 Change 5: Updated cost per net and insecticide resistance adjustment for the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) CEA 
 

 
 
 Change 6: Added Madagascar to the Helen Keller International CEA 
 

 
 
 Change 7: Fixed errors in the cost per life saved calculations for life-saving top charities 
 

 
 
 Change 8: Updated our malaria mortality calculations and our estimates of the number of people covered by each distributed net in the AMF CEA 
 

 
 
 Change 9: Split the Sightsavers CEA for the DRC into province-level columns with province-specific worm burden adjustments 
 

 
 
 Change 10: Fixed an error in our cost per life saved calculation in the New Incentives CEA 
 

 
 
 Change 11: Reconciled the population estimates for 1-59-month-olds in Nigeria in the AMF CEA 
 

 
 

 

 
 
 Version 2 — Published April 3, 2023 
 
 
 
 
 Change 1: Updating cost per child estimates in our Deworm the World CEA 
 

 
 
 Change 2: Updating cost per supplement estimates in our Helen Keller International CEA 
 

 
 
 Change 3: Updating the leverage/funging probabilities in our Helen Keller International CEA 
 

 

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