1. A question posed simply in terms of “the best level” would be measuring some sort of tangled-up combination of respondents’ values and their opinions about facts. That might be a bad thing (though I note that the question about political affiliation, at least, has the same feature). Instead, one could ask something like “what level of aid do you think would maximize Africa’s GDP after 20 years?” or “what level of aid do you think would maximize average expected QALYs at birth over the whole human population”.
2. When considering an individual’s charitable activity, of course we should think in terms of marginal efficiencies. That’s not so clear when considering the question of the total amount of aid that might go from the affluent West to the Third World.
3. You mean (unless you have relevant information I don’t, which is eminently possible) that some African economists are saying that the aid is harmful. It would be much more interesting to know typical African economists’ opinions. If nothing else, there is obvious sampling bias here: if two African economists approach an American publisher, one proposing to write a book saying “Aid is actively harmful; stop it now” and one proposing to write one saying “Aid is useful; please do a bit more of it”, which one is going to get the contract? It seems to me that there are multiple different factors making it far more likely to be the first one that have scarcely any correlation with the actual truth of the matter.
4. Yes, of course, actual decisions need to be made project by project. That doesn’t mean that one can’t hold an opinion about the approximate gross amount of aid there should be. (Such as, for instance, “none”, which is an opinion you don’t seem to object to even though it’s the ultimate in not-project-by-project answers since it necessarily returns the same answer for every project.)
1. A question posed simply in terms of “the best level” would be measuring some sort of tangled-up combination of respondents’ values and their opinions about facts. That might be a bad thing (though I note that the question about political affiliation, at least, has the same feature). Instead, one could ask something like “what level of aid do you think would maximize Africa’s GDP after 20 years?” or “what level of aid do you think would maximize average expected QALYs at birth over the whole human population”.
2. When considering an individual’s charitable activity, of course we should think in terms of marginal efficiencies. That’s not so clear when considering the question of the total amount of aid that might go from the affluent West to the Third World.
3. You mean (unless you have relevant information I don’t, which is eminently possible) that some African economists are saying that the aid is harmful. It would be much more interesting to know typical African economists’ opinions. If nothing else, there is obvious sampling bias here: if two African economists approach an American publisher, one proposing to write a book saying “Aid is actively harmful; stop it now” and one proposing to write one saying “Aid is useful; please do a bit more of it”, which one is going to get the contract? It seems to me that there are multiple different factors making it far more likely to be the first one that have scarcely any correlation with the actual truth of the matter.
4. Yes, of course, actual decisions need to be made project by project. That doesn’t mean that one can’t hold an opinion about the approximate gross amount of aid there should be. (Such as, for instance, “none”, which is an opinion you don’t seem to object to even though it’s the ultimate in not-project-by-project answers since it necessarily returns the same answer for every project.)
How would everyone feel about a question phrased something like:
“True or false: the marginal effect of extra money being given to aid in Africa through a charity like UNICEF is generally positive.”