Timely and equitable access to vaccines and other health technologies is vital in effectively responding to pandemics and treating other communicable diseases. This paper shows how countries might overcome real or purported intellectual property (IP) barriers to regional COVID-19 vaccine...

A major policy concern across public vaccination programs is non-compliance. Exploiting Danish population data and three national reforms in regression discontinuity designs, we document the effects of reminders for childhood vaccination coverage. Retrospective reminders are primarily effective...

This study investigates the different cognitive and non-cognitive characteristics associated with individuals' willingness to get vaccinated against Covid-19 and their actual vaccination status. Our empirical analysis is based on data obtained from three survey waves of about 2,000 individuals...

(1) Background: Any disturbance in the pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC) can disrupt the supply of medicines and affect the efficiency of health systems. Due to shortages in the global pharma supply chain over the past few years and the complex nature of free trade and its limitations when...

In settings where resistance and rampant misinformation against vaccines exist, the prospect of containing infectious diseases remains a challenge. Can delivery of information regarding the benefits of vaccination through personal home visits by local ambassadors increase vaccine uptake? We...

Background: After the emergence of the frst vaccines against the COVID-19, public health authorities have promoted mass vaccination in order to achieve herd immunity and reduce the efects of the disease. Vaccination rates have difered between countries, depending on supply (availability of...

Background More than two years into the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, it remains unclear whether fnancial incentives can reduce vaccine hesitancy and improve uptake among key unvaccinated populations. This study estimated the willingness of racial/ethnic minority adults in the United...

The COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine have highlighted the dependence of the European Union (EU) on individual trading partners. One of the tasks of the European Commission’s new Directorate-General, the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), established in 2021, will...

Competition law may play an important role in drug pricing control by containing high prices derived from economic violations. Since the use of competition tools is not limited by the TRIPS Agreement or other international binding disciplines, there is ample policy room to explore how countries,...

This paper examines how the courts in three developing countries (Kenya, South Africa, and India) have addressed the tension between patent rights on pharmaceutical products and the right to health. The paper begins by examining the nature of the relationship between patent rights and the right...

The use of TRIPS flexibilities by WTO members involves interpretation of the obligations under TRIPS which can be challenged under the WTO dispute settlement system. Mutually agreed solutions, panel or Appellate Body decisions adopted in such disputes can thus impact the scope of TRIPS...

Does using prescription drugs off-label increase disability and medical expenditure? This paper uses a unique dataset to evaluate off-label vs. on-label drug use in the US non-institutionalized population. Patients using drugs off-label have on average $515 higher medical expenditure and...

This working paper provides a statistical analysis of 74 patent families which cover subject matter relevant to ten COVID-19 vaccines. These vaccines have accounted for 99% of the global COVID-19 vaccine production as of 31 December 2021, comprising over ten billion doses. Eight of them, namely...

The use of TRIPS flexibilities by WTO members involves interpretation of the obligations under TRIPS which can be challenged under the WTO dispute settlement system. Mutually agreed solutions, panel or Appellate Body decisions adopted in such disputes can thus impact the scope of TRIPS...

This paper empirically analyzes the impact of leadership communication on the COVID-19 vaccination rate using a quasi-experimental design. Based on a speech of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, we examine how political leaders can in uence the willingness to get vaccinated of a country's...

We apply a novel crowdsourcing approach to provide rapid insights on the most promising interventions to promote uptake of COVID-19 booster vaccines. In the first stage, international experts proposed 46 unique interventions. To reduce noise and potential bias, in the second stage, experts and...

This paper presents the results of a survey exploring the determinants of vacinees' confidence in COVID-19 vaccines and their motivations to become vaccinated. At the threatening rise of the highly infectious Omicron variant, in December 2021, we interviewed people in waiting lines of...

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely tested humanity, revealing the need to develop and improve the medical, economic, managerial, and IT components of vaccine management systems. The vaccine lifecycle includes vaccine research and development, production, distribution, and vaccination of the...

The purpose of this study is to identify elements that influence the sale of generic pharmaceutical products during their life cycle in order to achieve more comprehensive planning and to prevent a decline stage of the product life cycle (PLC). We used a system dynamic model to identify the...

This paper advances that WHO Member States, having agreed to the objectives of advancing equity and solidarity for future pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, now must operationalize these. The paper offers suggestions for the ongoing WHO processes of: 1) review of recommendations...

We evaluate the impact of oral polio vaccines on the incidence of disabilities in India, focusing on polio-related disability. Polio was hyperendemic in India even as recently as the early 1990s but the country was declared wild polio virus-free in 2014. Average treatment effects on the treated...

Identifying sources of vaccine hesitancy is one of the central challenges in fighting the Covid- 19 pandemic. In this study, we focus on the role of public misperceptions of doctors' views. Motivated by widespread concern that media reports create uncertainty in how people perceive expert...

In this paper we empirically analyze the effect of the vaccinations against the SARS-CoV-2 virus on the Covid-19 pandemic for European countries from February 2021 to February 2022 with weekly data. We perform panel fixed effects estimations, GMM estimations and nonlinear penalized spline...

This paper examines how the courts in three developing countries (Kenya, South Africa, and India) have addressed the tension between patent rights on pharmaceutical products and the right to health. The paper begins by examining the nature of the relationship between patent rights and the right...

Millions of people refuse COVID-19 vaccination. Using original data from two surveys in nine OECD countries, we analyze the determinants of anti-vax intentions in December 2020 and show that half of the anti-vax individuals were vaccinated by summer 2021. Vaccinations were more likely among...

This paper empirically examines the economic effects of COVID-19 vaccine rollouts using a cross-country daily database of vaccinations and high-frequency indicators of economic activity - nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions, carbon monoxide (CO) emissions, and Google mobility indices - for a sample...

There have been more than 500,000 opioid overdose deaths since 2000. To analyze the opioid epidemic, we construct a model where individuals, with and without pain, choose whether to misuse opioids knowing the probabilities of addiction and dying. These odds are functions of opioid use. Markov...

Die Covid-19-Pandemie und der Ukrainekrieg haben die Abhängigkeit der Europäischen Union (EU) von einzelnen Handelspartnern deutlich gemacht. Eine der Aufgaben der 2021 von der Kommission neu eingerichteten Generaldirektion für Krisenvorsorge und -reaktion bei gesundheitlichen Notlagen (HERA)...