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Semester 2

Global Priorities (ECNM08025)

Subject

Economics

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

1

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Course Summary

This course aims to bring students closer to answering an important question: what should humanitys priorities be? Every year, governments, foundations, and individuals spend hundreds of billions of dollars to improve the world. But even this kind of money isnt enough to solve all of the worlds problems, so we must prioritise. Doing this well is critically important: it is plausible that better prioritisation could save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives per year, could help lower extinction risk by between 1% and 10%, could raise global economic output by more than 10%, or could otherwise considerably improve our condition.

Course Description

This introductory course is intended to give students context about the current state of knowledge about the worlds biggest problems and how they might be solved. It has no prerequisites and assumes no prior knowledge beyond what all students will have learned in secondary school (or equivalent). Specific topics covered will include: global health (including mortality from easily preventable causes), extinction risk (including both natural risks such as asteroid impacts but also anthropogenic risks such as engineered pandemics or malignant artificial intelligence), economic development, population ethics, and more. There will be facts to learn in this course, but they are important facts which you'll be glad to know, and there will be resources to support your learning. Global priorities research is inherently interdisciplinary, using techniques from economics, philosophy, maths, and from other social sciences. This course is (mostly) taught by economists, so there will be an economic emphasis, but no prior economics exposure is assumed or required.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 60%, Coursework 40%, Practical Exam 0%

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