Millions of people are being vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 every day, but the virus is also mutating and spreading fast. Vaccine production is increasing, but supply still constrains vaccinations worldwide. Using lower doses of vaccines could dramatically accelerate vaccination. Available...

We argue that alternative COVID-19 vaccine dosing regimens could potentially dramatically accelerate global COVID-19 vaccination and reduce mortality, and that the costs of testing these regimens are dwarfed by their potential benefits. We first use the high correlation between neutralizing...

Vaccinating the world's population quickly in a pandemic has enormous health and economic benefits. We analyze the problem faced by governments in determining the scale and structure of procurement for vaccines. We analyze alternative approaches to procurement. We find that if the goal is to...

The Covid-19 pandemic is estimated to have caused over 7 million deaths and reduced economic output by over $13 trillion to date. While vaccines were developed and deployed with unprecedented speed, pre-pandemic investments could have accelerated their widespread introduction, saving millions of...

We review economic arguments for using public policy to accelerate vaccine supply during a pandemic. Rapidly vaccinating a large share of the global population helps avoid economic, mortality, and social losses, which in the case of Covid-19 mounted into trillions of dollars. However,...

We derive the optimal funding mechanism to incentivize development and production of vaccines against diseases with epidemic potential. In the model, suppliers' costs are private information and investments are noncontractible, precluding cost-reimbursement contracts, requiring fixed-price...

A booster of the COVID-19 vaccine targeting the prevailing Omicron variant did not become available in the United States until a year after the variant was first detected. This pattern of developing, testing, and distributing a variant-specific booster may become the default response to further...

We seek to estimate the prestige value of winning beyond monetary prizes in Cutthroat Kitchen, a cooking show in which dishes are judged in a series of elimination rounds, with the twist that action is periodically paused to auction sabotages against rivals. We estimate the distribution of...

This paper evaluates the social value of investing in vaccine research, development, and manufacturing capacity for pandemic preparedness and response. Rapid vaccination during pandemics can significantly reduce mortality, economic losses, and societal disruptions. However, vaccine manufacturers...