The workings of the national and global economy affect many people. Often the global economy is unstable, which can be costly: for instance, the Great Recession caused a rise in unemployment, and might have had other serious, but less visible, effects such as increasing cancer deaths worldwide (Maruthappu et al. 2016).

The Open Philanthropy Project believes that there are macroeconomic policies that could alleviate some of this instability, and reduce its associated costs. It supports work to advocate for such policies, and to research better policies (Open Philanthropy 2016).