Wow this is so well done. I'm really excited to see what else you have in the pipeline, and more generally for high quality EA content!

Thanks Vasco! I think it depends on how well your particular system is a strict A > B> C> Done flow. If it's as linear as car production, then it is indeed that case that if you make 100 wheels, 20 front axles and 40 windshields per day, you have made 20 cars (your bottleneck is the axles). And making 400 wheels the next day without changing your axle output has zero effect on the number of cars produced, the additional "productivity" is entirely wasted.

Not every process will be quite so linear, but at least for the elements that are, I do think that increasing the output of non-bottlenecks will have zero effect on the output you care about.

In that case it was just waiting for USDA approval of a pilot of the vaccine (it was a vaccine for chickens). Our best guess was that the approval was another, say, 2 months out, so we could just let the vaccine pilot batch take a bit longer to make and it wouldn't affect when the pilot itself started (we could make the vaccine before it was approved, we just couldn't actually use it).

It might seem strange but there are many choices that poor people make that could save tens of dollars a year, that people don't take advantage of. I would weakly disagree that poor people are good at saving money, especially if it requires a small investment first.

I think part, but not all of that, is due to rationally putting a high premium on avoiding catastrophe, with poor families often operating barely above the limits of survival. You want to wait to sell your crops in 2 months when the market is better but what if your crops get eaten by pests, or the market actually collapses? For a poor family, that could spell total disaster, whereas at least by selling the crops today, at the low harvest season prices, you are guaranteed to get something. (That doesn't explain the TV though! But I think cash transfer studies suggest that marginal funds are normally spent more wisely than on TVs)

That points to the value of interventions that reduce that risk, e.g. "I'll lend you money at harvest time and you only pay me back if you can sell your crops at a higher price in the low season" type deals.

I have no particular take on LG, I was mostly focused on your question about the market failure. I've no reason to think LG couldn't do a great job, this sounds very much like their area of expertise!

I can't speak to this product in particular but my experience at One Acre Fund in Tanzania was that it's often just really hard to physically distribute products to rural Africa without super high costs or damage. The practicalities of distribution are hard to solve, which I guess is more what Nick is looking to do here. Once you find a way to get the product in front of users and it saves them money, they'll often buy it, I agree that it might not need to be given for free (not withstanding another practical note: if you need to charge, that also generates a bunch of logistics!)

Ah I am so jealous, you only get that first The Goal reading experience once :). I have recommended it more than any other book I've read, I think. I hope you enjoyed it even 10% as much as I did!

Nice, agreed. I could totally see cups being superior, I mostly was thinking of OAF from the perspective of having shareable lessons on e.g. marketing, impact measurement, stuff that might make ODH's work a little easier. Will share what I hear!

Interesting idea. I know One Acre Fund had a (possibly just pilot) program distributing Afripads in Kenya (https://www.afripadsfoundation.org/the-challenge/). I happen to be chatting with old colleagues from the Kenya program soon, will share any lessons + connect you if useful.

Hey Vasco, I just joined CEA last month to start building out an internal monitoring and evaluation function. Getting into our impact in terms of things like career changes + donations is a top priority. For now, I'm still in learning mode, but I hope to have some defensible ideas on this soon!