Suggestions for EA-related topics for a high school Extended Essay?

By Catherine J Wang @ 2023-06-23T10:46 (+2)

Hi everyone! I am an International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma student looking to write my required Extended Essay (4000 words) in a topic related to effective altruism. I have been reading about it and following EA ever since 9th grade.

For the extended essay, I chose the subject of economics and proposed the following questions to my advisor (econ teacher):

To what extent can we measure the effectiveness and sustainability of charity organizations?
How can microeconomic policy and innovation be stimulated in sub-Saharan Africa to bring about wider access to renewable energy?
To what extent are imposing different types of wealth taxes in USA effective for decreasing the wealth gap?
What are the marginal social costs of malaria on individual households in Africa?

However, these were all shot down. In order for me to get a good score on my essay, the research question has to be (1) very specific to the region & subject matter (2) tie into an economics concept learned in class, preferably microeconomics, because it is more specific and "micro", and (3) have some research and data already written to back up my claim.

The problem is that everything I am interested about it too broad. I ended up coming up with these questions:

To what effect has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the pricing strategy of gym franchises in the US?
How will Netflix's crackdown on password-sharing affect its competition with other streaming services?
To what extent does differential license plate pricing in Shanghai effectively reduce the consumption of internal combustion engine vehicles, compared to direct subsidies to purchasing EVs?

These can guarantee that I get a good question as a basis to my essay, but I find them so uninteresting. When I chose economics I wanted to be able to talk about things I was passionate about, but instead I find myself obsessing about the grading.

My question is, does anyone have any suggestions into topics I could write about that have fit the criteria? Is there anyway I could modify my questions to make them EA-related or more meaningful?

Shakeel Hashim @ 2023-06-23T12:42 (+4)

Sorry that you're struggling to find something here! I don't have any great ideas, but some stuff that might be promising avenues to explore:

Tobacco control and taxation in LMICs (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RRm8vnmwjWK24ung2/taxing-tobacco-the-intervention-that-got-away-happy-world-no and https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/tobacco-control/) -- relatedly, alcohol policy https://www.givewell.org/research/grants/RESET-alcohol-December-2021
Telecoms and mobile money (https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/telecommunications-in-lmics/ and https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vjysioCANWNXFKipq/the-impact-of-mobile-phones-and-mobile-money-for-people-in)
Cash transfers https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/acBFLTsRw3fqa8WWr/large-study-examining-the-effects-of-cash-transfer-programs
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qyhDz9djZAmxZ6Qzx/how-economists-got-africa-s-aids-epidemic-wrong

You might also want to look at Charity Entrepreneurship's research: https://www.charityentrepreneurship.com/research (road safety could be interesting?). Best of luck!!

will112 @ 2023-06-24T11:55 (+7)

Hey! Thank you SO much for all these resources! They were very helpful, and I'm glad there are a lot more opportunities to write about EA than I thought.

Kirsten @ 2023-06-23T15:15 (+2)

One option for generating new ideas:

-make a list of 10+ concepts from your economics class

-make a list of 10+ topics/questions you find interesting or important (ideally ones you already know you can find data on, like what Shakeel posted or topics from Our World in Data)

-start mixing and matching from the two lists to see if you can find some interesting essay topics (behavioural economics and road safety? cost curves and tobacco policy?)

Another option for generating ideas, depending on your mark scheme:

-find an interesting and important scholarly article

-what's one unstated assumption the author made, or something they forgot to think about?

-write an updated version of their paper (potentially including running some updated analysis on their data!) to account for whatever they missed out when they published their paper

will112 @ 2023-06-24T11:56 (+3)

This is so helpful for coming up with a research question, thank you so much! The list methods works so well for me.

Axby @ 2023-06-24T11:10 (+1)

You may want to check out: https://effectivethesis.org/thesis-topics/

will need to scope it down to something more manageable for 4k words. You may also be able to apply for coaching with them. All the best!

will112 @ 2023-06-24T11:57 (+1)

Oh my god, the resource I didn't know I needed, thank you so much!