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Book #7: How to Spend 50 Billion to Make the World A Better Place edited by Bjorn Lomberg

This book is the result of a conference of world-leading economists (8, 3 Nobel laureates) asked to perform cost-benefit analyses of spending money on various world problems. The results are then brought together and ranked in order of priority.
The results:
HIV/AIDS – 27 Billion with a cost-benefit ratio of 40
Malnutrition – 12 Billion
Free trade – “Small” cost resulting in huge benefits, e.g. 2,400 Billion/year
Malaria – 10 Billion

It’s interesting that all the economists agree that free trade is a no-brainer. They explain that the resistance to free trade is purely due to lobbyists who have a lot to lose despite the obvious overall gains of the countries involved—gains which will in the end make it back to the lobbyists and their corporations. I.e., in the short-term some companies lose and that’s enough to create so many holdouts.

Notably, global warming didn’t make the cut. The meeting (The Copenhagen Convention) occurred, though, before the recent slew of IPCC reports that greatly strengthened the evidence for global warming. When the report was published there wasn’t enough data on the economic feasibility of fighting global warming so the economists suggested the issue be looked at again once those studies have been completed. Now that those studies have been completed, and the results generally show economic benefits of fighting global warming, I’d be interested in seeing an updated report.