As of Aug. 2, 2021, 1693 injury claims associated with COVID-19 medical countermeasures have been filed in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), of which 686 claims were related to COVID-19 vaccines and urgently needed compensation decisions. However, from an economic and public policy perspective, we find that the CICP design has unintended consequences: locating CICP in the executive agency DHHS potentially creates a conflict of interest, and not permitting judicial review generates a lack of checks and balances, both of which could jeopardize justice. These fundamental problems would subsequently weaken four key performance indicators of CICP compared with its judicial counterpart in the Court of Federal Claims. CICP lacks accountability, transparency, and cost-effectiveness efficiency, with 94% of its total costs spent on administration rather than compensation. CICP’s ability to compensate is also questionable. If COVID-19 claims were compensated at its historical rate, CICP would face around $21.16 million in compensation outlays and $317.94 million in total outlays, 72.1 times its current balance. To ensure just compensation for injured petitioners during COVID-19 and future public health emergencies, we recommend Congress (1) initiate a major reform by relocating CICP from DHHS to the Claims Court or (2) keep CICP within DHHS and make incremental changes by permitting judicial review of DHHS administrative adjudication of CICP claims. We further recommend Congress audit and adjust budgets for CICP and DHHS promptly propose an injury table for COVID-19 claims. This is the first study that contributes an economic perspective to the limited literature on CICP and also provides unique and rich economic data.

This paper aims to unravel the competing effects of the health investment. It explores, both analytically and numerically, the equilibrium shift and transitional dynamics after a one-time policy of health investment. We find that such a policy improves health status in the long run, but harms economic growth in both short and long term. The relative sizes of these competing effects depend on the specific health parameters. Within the plausible range for the value of health relative to consumption, households gain welfare in the long run as long as the effectiveness of labor in health production is large. The expanded health sector policy makes households worse off only if labor is rather unproductive in producing health and households value health relatively little. The findings challenge the policy recommendations of the World Bank (1993) and World Health Organization (2001) in that good health increases neither the productivity of workers nor the economic growth rate. It is hoped that the relative simplicity of our model, compared to the existing theoretical literature, can help close the gap between formal academic work on this topic and actual debates among policy makers in both developed and developing countries.

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I am deeply grateful to Don Saari for inspiring and advising me this dissertation. It is based on a novel approach discovered by Don, who inspires me to explore its application to medical ethics. His advice coincides with Poncare's insight a century ago, and still, has never been done before until now. His advice also shapes a unique direction of my career -to integrate mathematics and medicine to solve problems that matter. Thank you, Don. Special thanks to Don Saari for teaching me his master's way of thinking, such as see connections among concepts; explain complex ideas in plain English; always be curious to find problems in daily life and solve them intuitively and creatively. Important information is missing when aggregating from parts to the whole and from the local to the global, which is true for both natural and social sciences. These are the most important training I have ever had. No words can express my gratitude to you, Don.I also thank Dan Jessie, Santiago Guisasola, Ryan Kendall, and other members of Don Squad for intellectually stimulating discussion every week -you are a unique group in this world.During my study, Louis Narens also provided an enormous amount of helpful comments, encouragement, and funding opportunities. Thank you for your care, Louis.

This paper aims to unravel the competing effects of the health investment. It explores, both analytically and numerically, the equilibrium shift and transitional dynamics after a one-time policy of health investment. We find that such a policy improves health status in the long run, but harms economic growth in both short and long term. The relative sizes of these competing effects depend on the specific health parameters. Within the plausible range for the value of health relative to consumption, households gain welfare in the long run as long as the effectiveness of labor in health production is large. The expanded health sector policy makes households worse off only if labor is rather unproductive in producing health and households value health relatively little. The findings challenge the policy recommendations of the World Bank (1993) and World Health Organization (2001) in that good health increases neither the productivity of workers nor the economic growth rate. It is hoped that the relative simplicity of our model, compared to the existing theoretical literature, can help close the gap between formal academic work on this topic and actual debates among policy makers in both developed and developing countries.