Research and Publications
Rethink Priorities’ main research areas are animal welfare, global catastrophic risks, global health and development, and surveys and data analysis.
The below database includes all of the organization’s public research reports. In addition to working on our own research agenda, our staff also conduct research on a consultancy basis. Much of our commissioned work is not—or not yet—published, especially in the areas of global health and development (including climate change) as well as AI governance.
Please view our 2023 annual report for further information about our private reports as well as Rethink Priorities’ other projects beyond research.
Search our publications and research
This Rethink Priorities report provides a shallow overview of the potential for impactful opportunities from institutional plant-based meal campaigns in the US, France, Germany, UK, Spain, and Italy based on reviewing existing research and speaking with organizations conducting such campaigns.
In April 2024, GiveWell commissioned Rethink Priorities to conduct research on mosquito nets. The aim was to briefly evaluate whether some nets that are distributed but not used could be causing harm if they are being used for fishing. This rapid research focused on whether greater demand for existing fish stocks could lead to depletion and disrupt long-term sustainability and food security, which we refer to as “overfishing”.
This post summarizes research into the Chinese mantis, focusing on the genes associated with nociception (the ability to perceive noxious stimuli). This type of research may help to improve the conditions on farms to better meet the needs of insects.
Researcher Sagar Shah estimated how cost effective farmed fish slaughter commitments from retailers might be in Europe. His research focused on France, Italy, and Spain because of the large scale of consumption of farmed fish species that don’t benefit from stunning in these countries.
This is the third report in Rethink Priorities’ Shrimp Welfare Sequence, a series that addresses whether and how to best protect the welfare of shrimp. After outlining the welfare threats farmed shrimp may face, this report investigates the effect of these welfare threats on pre-slaughter mortality.
This post summarizes research that Rethink conducted in 2022 on the trajectory of the prices of clean energy over the next 25-100 years. The researchers also looked into whether resource or scientific constraints may inhibit clean energy innovation and scaling.
This post summarizes research that Rethink conducted in 2022 on the neglectedness of carbon capture technologies over a five- to ten-year horizon, as well as bottlenecks associated with the field and tractable interventions to overcome them.
This post summarizes research that Rethink conducted in December 2021 into the state of climate philanthropy—including the amount that has been committed, how it is allocated, and the identity of major funders—as well as a comparison with public and private climate funding.
This post is a short summary of research on farmed cricket welfare considerations funded by Rethink Priorities as part of our research agenda on understanding the welfare of insects on farms. The paper includes recommendations.
This post summarizes research that Rethink conducted in 2022 for into scientific capacity in sub-Saharan Africa. The main aim of this project was to understand whether it could be a high-impact grantmaking area for Open Philanthropy.
This research updated GiveWell’s previous literature review on the long-term income effects of childhood malaria to determine whether the assumption that income in adulthood decreases by 1% per childhood malaria case should be adjusted and whether any further evidence should be considered.
This report is a broad overview of larval source management, including evidence for effectiveness, room for more funding, and coverage by existing implementers.
This summary aims to understand whether and how the “double treatment” parameter in GiveWell’s model on vitamin A supplementation should be updated, and to produce estimates for additional countries of interest.
This is a summary of an evidence review of family planning interventions. The review mostly focused on the Family Planning High Impact Practices List, or HIPs, which are a set of family planning practices considered to be the gold standard, and on “Service Delivery” interventions, the category of HIPs that best aligns with GiveWell’s traditional program model.
This post is a short summary of research on yellow mealworm welfare that was funded by Rethink Priorities. The full paper on this research was published in a peer-reviewed, open access journal.
This report examines the Priority Review Vouchers (PRV) that the US government has issued under its Tropical Disease PRV Program, which provides financial incentives for research and development targeting neglected tropical diseases.
In their review of corporate campaigns for cage-free eggs, our researchers found that, on average, a one-commitment increase leads to a 0.035 (95% CI: 0.01 - 0.06) percentage point rise in the share of cage-free hen housing. Given the large number of hens in the industry, the impact of a few new commitments per year is substantial.
This is the second report in Rethink Priorities’ Shrimp Welfare Sequence. The first report estimated the scale of shrimp farming. This report examines the welfare threats that these individuals face.
Given the number of wild animals that exist, interventions to improve their welfare could have greater expected value than interventions on behalf of other groups. Yet, wild animals receive only a small share of resources earmarked for animal welfare causes. This report explores how different risk aversion frameworks might help increase advocates’ reasoning transparency.
Universal introduction of vaccines in low- and middle-income countries has lagged behind introductions in high-income countries. While Gavi—a global public-private partnership—has helped to alleviate cost-related delays, additional bottlenecks remain. This report suggests interventions to further improve efficiency and experiences throughout the vaccine delivery process.
This report summarizes results from Rethink Priorities’ second annual gathering of animal advocates (held in July 2023). Highlights include advocates’ perceptions about how the field should allocate resources.
This is the tenth post in the Worldview Investigations Team’s sequence of posts—Causes and uncertainty: Rethinking value in expectation (CURVE). In this post, Rethink Priorities’ Co-CEOs explain how the organization is addressing risk and uncertainty.
This post introduces an app—Distributr—developed by Rethink Priorities’ Jamie Elsey to better incorporate and visualize uncertainty in cost-effectiveness estimates. As a case study, the post discusses GiveWell’s assessment of Happier Lives Institute’s cost-effectiveness analyses for StrongMinds.
This is the ninth post in the Worldview Investigations Team’s sequence of posts—Causes and uncertainty: Rethinking value in expectation (CURVE). This post introduces Rethink Priorities’ cross-cause cost-effectiveness model.
The primary focus of this report is to review GiveWell’s current formulation of its discount rate by recommending improvements and reinforcing justifications for areas that do not require improvement.
This is the eighth post in the Worldview Investigations Team’s sequence of posts—Causes and uncertainty: Rethinking value in expectation (CURVE). This post examines whether x-risk the most cost-effective issue to focus on if we count only the next few generations.
In 2019, there were about 1.2 million deaths due to road injuries—about 90% of which occurred in low- and middle-income countries. In this report, researchers reviewed case studies of key time periods in China and Vietnam to better understand the relative impact of (philanthropically-funded) policy changes versus other factors.
This is the seventh post in the Worldview Investigations Team’s sequence of posts—Causes and uncertainty: Rethinking value in expectation (CURVE). This post examines how uncertainty increases over time and estimates a model of how a Bayesian would interpret increasingly uncertain forecasts.
This is the sixth post in the Worldview Investigations Team’s sequence of posts—Causes and uncertainty: Rethinking value in expectation (CURVE). This report considers a time of perils-based case for prioritizing existential risk mitigation.
This is the fifth post in the Worldview Investigations Team’s sequence of posts—Causes and uncertainty: Rethinking value in expectation (CURVE). This report builds on the model originally introduced by Toby Ord on how to estimate the value of existential risk mitigation.