The Global Governance of Communicable Diseases: The Case for Vaccine R&D

Fighting communicable diseases such HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB, and malaria has become a global endeavor, with international health authorities urging the development of effective vaccines for the eradication of these global pandemics. Yet, despite the acknowledged urgency, and given the feasibility of effective vaccine development, public and private research efforts have failed to address a response adequate to the magnitude of the crisis. Members of the academic community suggest bridging this gap by devising research pull mechanisms capable of stimulating private investments, confident that competition-based market devices are more effective than public intervention in shaping scientific breakthroughs. With reference to the economics of innovation, the paper argues that, whilst such an approach would lead to a socially suboptimal production of knowledge, direct public intervention in vaccine R&D activities would represent a far more socially desirable policy option. In recognition of the current financial and political fatigue affecting the international community towards communicable disease control, the paper resorts to the theories of global public goods (GPGs) to provide governments, both in the North and in the South, with a powerful rationale for committing to a cooperative approach for vaccine R&D. The paper encourages the creation of a Global Health Research Fund to manage such exercise and proposes enshrining countries' commitments into an International Health Treaty. The paper ends by providing a number of policy recommendations.     

THE IMPACT OF RACIALLY INCLUSIVE SCHOOLING ON ADULT INCARCERATION RATES AMONG U.S. COHORTS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS AND WHITES SINCE 1930*

Despite the substantial body of research on the psychological and social effects of racial segregation in schools on African Americans, few studies have considered the possibility that more racially inclusive schools might reduce the risk of extremely negative adult life experiences such as incarceration. Yet such a connection is made plausible by research linking black racial isolation in schools to variables that are often associated with incarceration rates, including concentrated poverty, and low educational and occupational aspirations and attainment. In this paper, we apply methods first developed by labor economists to assess the impact of racial inclusiveness in schools on individual incarceration rates for 5‐year cohorts of African Americans and whites born since 1930. We find strong support for the conclusion that blacks educated in states where a higher proportion of their classmates were white experienced significantly lower incarceration rates as adults. Moreover, our analysis suggests that the effects of racial inclusiveness on black incarceration rates have grown stronger over time. These longitudinal effects are consistent with the argument that the educational climate of predominantly black schools has deteriorated in more recent decades.     

PREDICTING RISKS OF LARCENY THEFT VICTIMIZATION: A ROUTINE ACTIVITY ANALYSIS USING REFINED LIFESTYLE MEASURES

Routine activity theory has long been plagued by a heavy reliance on proxy measures of lifestyles, which typically include demographic variables that are regularly used as measures of lifestyle and behavior. This reliance on indirect measures forces researchers to suppose how and why these indicators are related to victimization risks. Using detailed measurements of activities and specific structural aspects of communities is clearly more desirable and beneficial when seeking to explain variances in victimization risks. This research advances theoretical understandings of victimization risks through an analysis of specific social activities, aspects of neighborhoods, and contribution of each to the risks of larceny victimization for college students. We find that greater specificity in measuring lifestyles is warranted, for it is not just leaving one's home and going out in public that increases one's risk for victimization (a typical finding of routine activity theory scholars), but where one goes and what one does that are the important larceny victimization predictors.