Vaccines: Propaganda and Practice

Vaccines are a cost effective, time tested means of reducing morbidity and mortality. As more and more new vaccines are introduced and more diseases come under the purview of ‘vaccination net’, the routine immunization program is sidelined.\ud This is compounded by vaccination practices in private health care system and anti vaccine propaganda and confusing pro vaccine propaganda. The primary purpose of the vaccine is shifting from prevention of diseases to monetary gains for the health care providers and manufacturers. There is a need to regulate the vaccination practices in the private health care system especially in the developing countries. The regulatory process should educate not only the community but also the health care providers and take adequate measures to control the ‘vaccine market forces

Arms Races and Negotiations

A state which does not desire an arms race may nevertheless acquire new weapons if it believes another state will acquire them. If each state assigns some arbitrarily small probability to the event that the other state has a dominant strategy to acquire more weapons, then a multiplier effect appears, and the unique Bayesian Nash equilibrium involves an arms race with probability one. However, if the prior probability that a player is a dominant strategy type is sufficiently small, then there is an equilibrium of the cheap-talk extension of the arms race game where the probability of an arms race is close to zero.Multiplier Effect, Bayesian Nash Equilibrium, Cheap-talk Extension, Arms Race Game

Shaping the Success of Social Impact Bonds in the United States: Lessons Learned from the Privatization of U.S. Prisons

American government officials are starting to experiment with a novel government-funding and privatization structure known as a social impact bond ( SIB ). An SIB is a contract between a government agency and a private entity in which the government agrees to pay the private entity an agreed-upon sum only if it can meet certain goals or outcomes. Currently, SIBs exist both globally and domestically, and are targeted to solve perpetual social ills such as the high homelessness and recidivism rates plaguing certain communities. By analogizing the problems facing private prisons to the potential problems facing the use of SIBs, this Note details the privatization challenges that government officials will likely face as they implement SIBs. Most importantly, this Note is the first to propose how government officials implementing SIBs can overcome the traditional obstacles facing privatization schemes—both through the structure of SIBs and through additional contractual solutions. Finally, the Note concludes with a discussion about how elements of SIBs can be incorporated to improve existing privatization models such as private prisons, and how SIBs alter the existing debate about privatization in this country

Liquidity and Manipulation of Executive Compensation Schemes

Several standard components of managerial compensation contracts have been criticized for encouraging managers to manipulate short-term information about the firm, thereby reducing transparency. This includes bonus schemes that encourage earnings smoothing, and option packages that allow managers to cash out early when the firm is overvalued. We show in an optimal contracting framework that these components are critical for giving long-term incentives to managers. The lack of transparency induced by the features of the contract makes it harder for the principal to engage in ex post optimal but ex ante inefficient liquidity provision to the manager.Executive compensation; earnings management; transparency