Socioeconomic systems should be understood as "complex" phenomena that cannot effectively be controlled or managed through central planning. In general, markets and other decentralised governance mechanisms that rely on competition and signalling better facilitate learning and adaptation in...

Nursing homes have been caught in the crosshairs of the coronavirus pandemic. As of early May 2020, Covid-19 had claimed the lives of more than 28,000 nursing home residents and staff in the United States. But U.S. nursing homes were unstable even before Covid-19 hit. The tragedy unfolding in...

The portfolio approach of financing drug development has been proposed as a financial innovation to improve the risk/return tradeoff of investment in drug development projects through the use of diversification and securitization. By investing in a sizable and well-diversified portfolio of novel...

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...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had an enormous impact on social and economic life and in particular. for human health care. In this paper, we document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying policies on individual health care utilization. We use detailed administrative...

Viruses are a major threat to human health, and - given that they spread through social interactions - represent a costly externality. This paper addresses three main issues: i) what are the unintended consequences of economic activity on the spread of infections? ii) how efficient are measures...

Viruses are a major threat to human health, and - given that they spread through social interactions - represent a costly externality. This paper addresses three main issues: i) what are the unintended consequences of economic activity on the spread of infections? ii) how efficient are measures...

On March 18, Congress enacted the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, the first economic relief bill in response to the pandemic. It mandates that state Medicaid programs cover diagnosis and testing for COVID-19 at no cost to beneficiaries and includes a temporary, conditional 6.2...

Three months into the COVID-19 outbreak caused by a novel strain of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), the world is still in search of an effective therapeutic drug. Experimental drugs developed for other infections, such as Gilead's remdesivir, have been repurposed with unclear success. A recent small...

How states institutionalize pandemic preparedness following the COVID-19 pandemic will determine their ability to cope with the next public health crisis. States with major metropolitan areas should consider building independent, state-specific emergency medical stockpiles to lessen their...