We survey the main economic aspects of the creation of an AIDS vaccine. We first describe the market conditions for this vaccine, and we show the critical importance of patents to start the costly R&D process. We then describe the main economic impediments to this venture, and the main financial...

We argue that reluctance to invest in drug treatments to fight the AIDS epidemics in developing countries is largely motivated by severe losses occurring from the future albeit uncertain appearance of a curative vaccine. We design a set of securities generating full insurance coverage against...