A professor of economics is planning to give a course on effective altruism in the coming academic year, and he asked me and others for a brief list of relevant scholarly writings. Here’s what I suggested [I have since revised and updated the list—PS, April 2020]:

• Aschenbrenner, Leopold, Existential risk and growth, forthcoming.
• Beckstead, Nick, On the overwhelming importance of shaping the far future, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University, chap. 1.
• Bostrom, Nick, Existential risk prevention as global priority, Global policy, vol. 4, no. 1 (February, 2013), pp. 15-31.
• Greaves, Hilary, Cluelessness, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 116, no. 3 (December, 2016), pp. 311-339.
• Greaves, Hilary & William MacAskill, The case for strong longtermism, forthcoming.
• MacAskill, William, Replaceability, career choice, and making a difference, Ethical theory and moral practice, vol. 17, no. 2 (April, 2014), pp. 269-283.
• Matheny, Jason Gaverick, Reducing the risk of human extinction, Risk analysis, vol. 27, no. 5 (October, 2007), pp. 1335-1344.
• Matheny, Jason Gaverick and Kai M. A. Chan, Human diets and animal welfare: the illogic of the larder, Journal of agricultural and environmental ethics, vol. 18, no. 6 (December, 2005), pp. 579–594.
• Ord, Toby, The moral imperative towards cost-effectiveness in global health, Washington DC: The Centre for Global Development, 2013.
• Singer, Peter, Famine, affluence, and morality, Philosophy & public affairs, vol. 1, no. 3 (Spring, 1972), pp. 229-243.
• Singer, Peter, All animals are equal, in P. Singer (ed.) Applied ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, pp. 215-228.
• Trammell, Phil, Discounting for patient philanthropists, forthcoming.

With thanks to Bastian Stern, Nick Beckstead and Lila Rieber for valuable feedback.