Hey podcast listeners, the episode you're about to hear is called Fixing the World Bang for the Buck Edition.

In it you'll hear how a bunch of economists have teamed up to measure the ROI or return on investment

for the development goals set by the United Nations. In other words, if you only have $100

or in the case of the UN $100 billion, let's say, to fight something like global poverty,

what's the best way to spend that money? What's the ROI on early education versus job training versus small business subsidies?

We do this kind of thing a lot here at Freakonomics Radio. Try to measure the ROI on things that aren't so easy to measure.

So let me turn this around and ask you a question. What is the ROI for you from Freakonomics Radio?

Does the time you spend listening to this show make your life in any way better, more pleasurable, less bewildering?

If you believe it does, if the number you put on its value is anything at all north of zero.

Well, I hope then you will consider making a contribution to WNYC, the public radio station here in New York that produces our show.

Just go to Freakonomics.com and hit the Donate button. Any and all contributions are appreciated, although you will find the rewards get better as you climb the dollar ladder,

Freakonomics Radio T-shirts and Mugs, Autographed Books, things like that.

And if you decide that this program isn't worth anything to you, not even five bucks, well, now we'll know that too.

And we'll work harder in the future to make it worth more.

But I do hope that you'll go to Freakonomics.com to donate, thanks a million or a billion, hundred billion, whatever the case may be.

My name is Bjorn Lombork. I'm a public intellectual, I guess you could say, and I run the Copenhagen Consensus Center where we bring together lots of economists and seven Nobel laureates to think about where do we spend money and do the most good per dollar spend.

Let's say you want to fix the world in some fashion to some degree as daunting and difficult as that may be.

And let's say that you have more than a hundred billion dollars a year to spend.

This is not a fictional scenario, this is what really happens.

Development aid is a huge industry. So what kind of problems do we spend money on? And how are those problems chosen?

We focus on a lot of different issues in the world and many of them we focus on because they get lots of attention there in the press, they have good stories, they have lots of crying kids or cute animals.

But of course in reality, what we need to do if we want to do good is to focus on where do we do the most good for every dollar spent.

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