CEPI leadership, and two reviewers and the editor for helpful comments and discussion, and Jayna Cummings for editorial assistance. Research support from the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering and the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University is gratefully acknowledged. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors only, and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of any institution or agency, any of their affiliates or employees, any of the individuals acknowledged above, or the National Bureau of Economic Research. Funding support from the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering is gratefully acknowledged, but no direct funding was received for this study and no funding bodies had any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of this manuscript. The authors were personally salaried by their institutions during the period of writing (though no specific salary was set aside or given for the writing of this manuscript).At least one co-author has disclosed a financial relationship of potential relevance for this research. Further information is available online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w27212.ack NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Recent outbreaks of infectious pathogens such as Zika, Ebola, and COVID-19 have underscored the need for the dependable availability of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EIDs). The cost and risk of R&D programs and uniquely unpredictable demand for EID vaccines have discouraged vaccine developers, and government and nonprofit agencies have been unable to provide timely or sufficient incentives for their development and sustained supply. We analyze the economic returns of a portfolio of EID vaccine assets, and find that under realistic financing assumptions, the expected returns are significantly negative, implying that the private sector is unlikely to address this need without public-sector intervention. We have sized the financing deficit for this portfolio and propose several potential solutions, including price increases, enhanced public-private partnerships, and subscription models through which individuals would pay annual fees to obtain access to a portfolio of vaccines in the event of an outbreak.

, CEPI leadership, and two reviewers and the editor for helpful comments and discussion, and Jayna Cummings for editorial assistance. Research support from the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering and the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University is gratefully acknowledged. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors only, and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of any institution or agency, any of their affiliates or employees, any of the individuals acknowledged above, or the National Bureau of Economic Research. Funding support from the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering is gratefully acknowledged, but no direct funding was received for this study and no funding bodies had any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of this manuscript. The authors were personally salaried by their institutions during the period of writing (though no specific salary was set aside or given for the writing of this manuscript). At least one co-author has disclosed a financial relationship of potential relevance for this research. Further information is available online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w27212.ack NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.