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 measure the impact of the initial Indian national COVID-19 lockdown on digital activity using browser histories of 1,094 individuals, spanning over 31.5 million website visits on computers and mobile devices. Reflecting the predicted increase in the value of online activity, both men and...

The global COVID-19 vaccination campaign is the largest public health campaign in history, with over 2 billion people fully vaccinated within the first 8 months. Nevertheless, the impact of this campaign on all-cause mortality is not well understood. Leveraging the staggered rollout of vaccines,...

Infrastructure assets have undergone substantial privatization in recent decades. How do different types of owners target and manage these assets? And does the contract form--control rights (concession) vs. outright ownership (sale)--matter? We explore these questions in the context of global...