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The Innogen Institute discussed Professor Smita Srinivas’s co-authored article Economics and Public Health: a care for interdisciplinary cohesion in the time of coronavirus. The interview was then summarised by Ritti Soncco for the University of Edinburgh.
Read the original full interview on The Innogen Initiative website: https://www.innogen.ac.uk/news/meet-our-researchers-prof-smita-srinivas.
“The more details you know about how markets function and what their design is meant for, the more precise you can be about economics and deciding what the policy response should be, including what non-market strategies to use. In the case of vaccine development, for example, the market size and demand will determine whether a private-sector led vaccine development initiative is reasonable.”
“At the moment, the market for a Covid-19 vaccine is, in principle, infinite and there has been all kinds of frantic activity to be the first to market. Governments, donors and multilateral institutions have been a little confused about what they should do. It is really important to have some clarity on what types of markets are required and why. Covid-19 is not the only important issue for many countries, since many co-circulating illnesses such as H1N1 or tuberculosis care are important alongside.” – From the Innogen interview.
“From an industry dynamics viewpoint, public health is an industrial organisation problem requiring greater attention; the economics underlying public health – as with much of economics – is out of date. ..The economic discipline is, says Prof Srinivas, ‘deeply fractured’.” – From the University of Edinburgh Ritti Soncco summary.