I stumbled on a related IGM poll (a survey of many of the top economists from the US) the other day, and they seem to believe that economic incentives through IP rights are important:
Then we should massively invest in alternative models for developing and producing vaccines. The reality is that monopoly prices and IP protections are making vaccines inaccessible to the majority of the world. If you just remove IP protections but don’t put something else in place, I could see that leading to bad outcomes, but that’s not what advocates are calling for. Decades of market fundamentalism has thoroughly limited our ideas of what is possible. Public sector drug development was the norm for many countries around the world, until the pharma industry captured rich country govts.
NO … this group of economists is very limited and not representative. It holds only economists from the rich west, and does not include a single voice (from the many excellent economists specialised on the subject) from the South or from poor countries. Public Health is so much more than financial
I stumbled on a related IGM poll (a survey of many of the top economists from the US) the other day, and they seem to believe that economic incentives through IP rights are important:
Then we should massively invest in alternative models for developing and producing vaccines. The reality is that monopoly prices and IP protections are making vaccines inaccessible to the majority of the world. If you just remove IP protections but don’t put something else in place, I could see that leading to bad outcomes, but that’s not what advocates are calling for. Decades of market fundamentalism has thoroughly limited our ideas of what is possible. Public sector drug development was the norm for many countries around the world, until the pharma industry captured rich country govts.
Are economists the right people to ask?
NO … this group of economists is very limited and not representative. It holds only economists from the rich west, and does not include a single voice (from the many excellent economists specialised on the subject) from the South or from poor countries. Public Health is so much more than financial