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...

(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...

Policy makers use reference pricing to curb pharmaceutical expenditures by reducing coverage of expensive branded drugs. In a theoretical analysis we show that the net effect of reference pricing is generally ambiguous when accounting for entry by generic producers. Reference pricing shifts...

The debate on whether COVID-19 vaccine patents are slowing down the pace of vaccination and the recovery from the crisis has brought the optimal design of pharmaceutical patent policy to the fore. In this paper we evaluate patent policy in the US pharmaceutical industry. We estimate the effect...

This Briefing Paper examines the resilience of the medical product and pharmaceutical global value chains. Based on this assessment, policy recommendations are presented to increase supply security, including measures to improve the resilience of supply chains, and to expand stockpiling. We also...

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...

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...

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...

This paper provides an analysis of patents covering selected antibodies and vaccines used in the treatment or prevention of COVID-19. The aim of the report is to support national patent offices and interested parties in developing countries with information that can serve as guidance for the...

The World Health Organization (WHO) should act as the directing and coordinating authority in global health but it has been steadily marginalized over time by design, through criticism as an inefficient organization, the reduction of assessed contributions and consequent impoverishment, and the...

The purpose of this study is to analyze the compulsory licensing (CL) regimes in selected countries, in particular the economic elements of the granting of Compulsory Licenses (CLs), the determination and negotiation of royalties to the right holder. For this purpose, a descriptive and...

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...

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...

This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 vaccination on food insecurity in the United States, using data from the Household Pulse Survey. Our primary research design exploits variation in vaccine eligibility across states over time as an instrumental variable to address the endogeneity of...

We study the effect of education on vaccination against COVID-19 and influenza in Germany and Europe. Our identification strategy makes use of changes in compulsory schooling laws and allows to estimate local average treatment effects for individuals between 59 and 91 years of age. We find no...

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...

Do firms increase product lines to deter entry and, if so, when is such a strategy successful? We use data from UK pharmaceuticals to examine how incumbents respond to change in the threat of entry. In line with the entry deterrence motive, originators' product launch rate is higher when the...

Access to medicines at prices patients can afford has been a recurrent concern for the global community ever since the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) was adopted in 1995 as one of the agreements under the World Trade Organization (WTO). In 2001, WTO Members...

We analyze changes in the willingness to substitute from prescribed pharmaceuticals to more affordable generic equivalents in response to the first experience with a substitution. Using Swedish individual-level data of prescribed and dispensed pharmaceuticals, we employ a dynamic event study and...

This paper aims to analyze the interfaces between Brazilian Competition Law and the issue of access to medicines, with special focus on abuses of industrial property rights in their exclusionary and exploitative effects. The paper analyzes the case law of the Brazilian Administrative Council for...

Policy makers use reference pricing to curb pharmaceutical expenditures by reducing coverage of expensive branded drugs. In a theoretical analysis we show that the net effect of reference pricing is generally ambiguous when accounting for entry by generic producers. Reference pricing shifts...

The accumulation of experience that occurs with production is likely to impact an organization's ability to develop manufacturing process innovations. However, how different types of manufacturing experience relate to the characteristics of an organization's process innovation output is an open...

This paper aims to analyze the interfaces between Brazilian Competition Law and the issue of access to medicines, with a special focus on abuse of industrial property rights and related exclusionary and exploitative effects. The paper analyzes the case law of Brazilian Administrative Council for...

The major bone of contention between the developed and developing countries in the TRIPS negotiations was patents for pharmaceuticals. The US-led developed countries bloc argued in favour of patents for pharmaceuticals amidst opposition from Brazil, India and other countries. Ample evidence,...

Background Managing type 2 diabetes represents a major public health concern due to its important and increasing prevalence. Our study investigates the impact of taking incretin-based medication on the risk of being hospitalized and the length of hospital stay for individuals with type 2...

The oscillation of COVID-19 growth beginning in early 2020 has had a sustaining impact on financial markets. Examining regional equity indices in ten epicentres of the virus, we investigate the manifestation of negative COVID-19 sentiment and associated growth (through total cases) and positive...

This paper explores how the first-year COVID-19 vaccination changed the volatility in the U.S. equity markets by comparing the COVID-19 period with the 1918 Spanish flu period. Using two approaches, regression analysis, and synthetic control method, this paper documents that had there been no...

We analyze prescription behavior of physicians in the public and private sector. We study two major diseases for which an effective, widely accepted low-cost treatment and alternative, more expensive treatments are available. We find that private sector physicians are more likely to prescribe...

Social norms affect a wide range of behaviors in society. We conducted a representative experiment to study how beliefs about the existing social norm regarding COVID-19 vaccination affect vaccination readiness. Beliefs about the norm are on average downward biased, and widely dispersed....

This paper studies the propensities of the U.S. population to seek a full dose of vaccinations against the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond the consideration of vaccine dissemination at the disaggregated or the local level, the main focus of this study is on determining whether a lack of health...