The gap between willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept (WTA) benefit values typifies situations in which reference points — and direction of movement from reference points — are consequential. Why WTA-WTP discrepancies arise is not well understood. We generalize models of...

A lack of timely financing for purchases of vaccines and other health products impeded the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on analysis of contract signature and delivery dates in COVID-19 vaccine advance purchase agreements, this paper finds that 60-75 percent of the delay in...

Pandemics and epidemics pose risks to lives, societies, and economies, and their frequency is expected to increase as rising trade and increased human interaction with animals leads to the emergence of new diseases. The COVID-19 pandemic teaches us that we can and must be better prepared, with...

Due to the suspension of in-person classes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, students at universities with earlier spring breaks traveled and returned to campus while those with later spring breaks largely did not. We use variation in academic calendars to study how travel affected the...

There is an emerging trend, particularly in international circles, to bemoan the human rights paradox in intellectual property. Thus, it is said that intellectual property rights are grounded in fundamental concepts of human dignity and just deserts. At the same time, however, it is recognized...

Little is known about the effects of regime change on government workers' job satisfaction. Conventional theories of work satisfaction have identified various individual or organisational antecedents of public employees' well-being in many different contexts. In this study, we add an additional...

Environmental, food, and health regulation in the UK and in many other European countries is in a state of crisis. Following a series of regulatory scandals, regulators decided that drastic changes were needed. There would be no more consensual style regulation with closed-door deliberations...

Upon outbreak of a contagious animal disease, a primary motive for restoring disease-free status is often to regain access to international product markets. Efforts applied toward continuing or regaining such access is a public good-all growers benefit regardless of extent of private efforts...

This paper builds on Barreca et al.’s (2013) finding that over the course of the 20th century the proliferation of residential air conditioning led to a remarkable decline in mortality due to extreme temperature days in the United States. Using panel data on monthly mortality rates of...