The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TTP) was a regional trade agreement negotiated by 12 countries, including New Zealand and the United States. Leveraging the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which set new global norms for intellectual property (IP) protections in 1995, the patent-holding pharmaceutical industry lobbied for enhanced IP protections and rules […]
Free trade agreements (FTAs) that aren’t well-designed can have detrimental impacts on population health. The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) was an FTA including 12 Pacific-rim nations: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam. Although it is no longer in force, many concerns were raised at […]
In 2015, the international community negotiated a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets to replace the Millenium Development Goals. The SDGs were implemented against the backdrop of neoliberal globalization and the deepening of global trade and investment agreements. Through the proliferation of bilateral and regional trade agreements (RTAs), concern arose around […]
The inclusion of elevated standards of intellectual property (IP) protection in the recently negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement has raised serious public health concerns regarding access to medicines. A lesser-known trade agreement that went into effect in January 2022 in the Asia-Pacific region is the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Framed as an attempt to […]
Development banks have a unique role to play in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and in emerging market and developing countries across the globe. Development banks seek to correct key market and government failures and crowd-in private sector economic activity into areas such as infrastructure and cleaner energy technologies, as well as into policy […]
China experienced significant volatility in its housing market from 2005-2013. Economists analyzing the determinants of volatility in these markets find that the bubble was largely driven by factors specific to the Chinese economy and Chinese economic policy. In a 2015 working paper, Yuan Tian and Kevin P. Gallagher examine the extent to which short-term capital […]
China has recently grown into a major export destination for the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region, second only to the United States. Over the last decade, China has tripled its market share of total LAC exports, more than tripled its share of extractive exports and doubled its share of agricultural exports. However, as […]
Throughout the negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), the United States’ (US) advocacy for intellectual property (IP) provisions generated widespread alarm. The leaked draft of the IP chapter showed ongoing resistance by most countries to many of the US proposals that would delay access to generic medicines. While later leaked drafts suggested some modifications […]
Vaccines against the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), a major cause of vaccine-preventable morbidity and mortality among children worldwide, have been available in the Indian private sector market since 1997. However, it was not until 2011 that the Government of India initiated the phased public sector introduction of an Hib vaccine. Despite this rollout, […]