The Optimal Budget Generator: A Causal Inference Protocol for Maximizing Median Health and Wealth Through Public Goods Funding

The Optimal Budget Generator: A Causal Inference Protocol for Maximizing Median Health and Wealth Through Public Goods Funding | Zenodo Skip to main Communities My dashboard Log in Sign up Zenodo is currently experiencing slowness and intermittent outages due to heavy automated traffic from bots and AI crawlers. We are aware of the problem, and our team is focused on stabilizing the service. Thank you for your patience. Published May 7, 2026 | Version 1.0 Working paper Open The Optimal Budget Generator: A Causal Inference Protocol for Maximizing Median Health and Wealth Through Public Goods Funding Authors/Creators Mike P. Sinn 1 Show affiliations 1.

International Campaign to End War and Disease Description Website: https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/optimal-budget-generator-spec.html Abstract: 20-40% of public goods funding is misallocated relative to outcome-maximizing benchmarks, representing trillions annually in foregone welfare gains. Budget processes respond to lobbying intensity and historical precedent rather than causal evidence of effectiveness. The Optimal Budget Generator (OBG) applies causal inference, diminishing returns modeling, and cost-effectiveness analysis to determine optimal public goods funding levels that maximize two welfare metrics: real after-tax median income growth and median healthy life years. For each spending category, OBG estimates an Optimal Spending Level (OSL) identifying where marginal returns equal opportunity cost. The Budget Impact Score (BIS) measures confidence in each OSL estimate based on study quality, statistical precision, and temporal recency of the underlying causal evidence. The result is a gap analysis showing which categories are over- or underfunded relative to evidence-based benchmarks, enabling systematic reallocation from low-return to high-return public investments. At system scale, the model's Optimal Governance Trajectory reaches 56.7x (95% CI: 19.3x-304x) the Earth baseline after 20 years, raises average income to \$1.16 million (95% CI: \$395,118-\$6.22 million) versus \$20,483 on the status-quo path, reaches \$10.7 quadrillion (95% CI: \$3.64 quadrillion-\$57.2 quadrillion) in total output, and recovers roughly \$101 trillion (95% CI: \$83.3 trillion-\$191 trillion)/year in suppressed value ([The Political Dysfunction Tax](https://political-dysfunction-tax.warondisease.org)). Summary: The Optimal Budget Generator (OBG) uses causal inference, diminishing returns modeling, and cost-effectiveness evidence to determine optimal public goods funding levels that maximize two welfare metrics: real after-tax median income growth and median healthy life years. For each spending category, OBG estimates an Optimal Spending Level (OSL) and produces a gap analysis showing where current government budgets are over- or underfunded relative to evidence-based benchmarks. The Budget Impact Score (BIS) measures confidence in each recommendation based on the quality of causal evidence. Notes Category: Academic Paper, Public Policy, Economics | Genre: Economics, Public Policy, Evidence-Based Governance | Target Audience: Researchers, Policy Makers, Economists, Public Finance Specialists Files obg-framework-paper.pdf Files (9.8 MB) Name Size Download all obg-framework-paper.pdf md5:946b46382a05a84d1bcd08f20ca84017 9.8 MB Preview Download Additional details Related works Cites 10.1198/jasa.2009.ap08746 (DOI) 10.1257/jep.24.2.3 (DOI) 10.1093/qje/qjq002 (DOI) 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107305 (DOI) 10.3982/ECTA9466 (DOI) 10.1371/journal.pone.0127242 (DOI) 10.5281/zenodo.18243914 (DOI) 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30925-9 (DOI) 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2009.11.001 (DOI) 10.5281/zenodo.18203221 (DOI) 10.1093/qje/qjv036 (DOI) 10.1093/inthealth/ihz003 (DOI) 10.1287/moor.6.1.58 (DOI) 10.5281/zenodo.18603834 (DOI) 10.5281/zenodo.18603840 (DOI) 10.1016/j.drudis.2019.01.009 (DOI) Is supplemented by Software documentation: https://manual.warondisease.org/knowledge/appendix/optimal-budget-generator-spec.html (URL) Software: https://github.com/wishonia/earth-optimization-protocol (URL) References {Harvard Kennedy School} (2020). 3.5\% participation tipping point. 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Versions External resources Indexed in OpenAIRE Communities Keywords and subjects Keywords budget-optimization optimal-budget-generator evidence-based-policy meta-analysis cost-effectiveness diminishing-returns reference-country-benchmarking budget-impact-score welfare-economics public-finance Details DOI DOI Badge DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20077599 Markdown [](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20077599) reStructuredText .. image:: https://zenodo.org/badge/DOI/10.5281/zenodo.20077599.svg :target: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20077599 HTML <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20077599"><img src="https://zenodo.org/badge/DOI/10.5281/zenodo.20077599.svg" alt="DOI"></a> Image URL https://zenodo.org/badge/DOI/10.5281/zenodo.20077599.svg Target URL https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20077599 Resource type Working paper Publisher Zenodo Languages English Rights License Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International No further description. 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