Innovation During a Crisis: Evidence from Covid-19

Bryan, Kevin; Lemus, Jorge; Marshall, Guillermo

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3587973

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…The scale and speed of the COVID-19 R&D has been noted by other observers (e.g. Bryan et al 2020, Le et al 2020.…”

Section: What Was the Size Of Covid-19 Randd Relative To Total Randd?supporting

confidence: 61%

“…In this context, the experience of COVID-19 suggests that scaling up innovation may require a better understanding of non-monetary incentives and also a more active role by governments in providing early-stage R&D incentives. 14 While we have discussed the size of R&D response and have also studied the subset of clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines, we have paid less attention to the optimal composition and quality of research effort that may be affected when innovation is scaled up quickly (see Bryan et al 2020). Also, one reason for the COVID-19 R&D exceptionalism could be the newness of COVID-19, which could make the expected marginal return from investing in the disease much higher than for other diseases (in the presence of decreasing returns to scale).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since we restrict our attentions to trials that are in phase 1, 2 or 3, we have a lower number of trials than the headline figure reported on clinicaltrials.gov.29 While we have discussed the size of R&D response and have also studied the subset of clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines, we have paid less attention to the optimal composition of research effort between re-purposed drugs vs. novel drugs/vaccines. In this context,Bryan et al (2020) build a model to illustrate that during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, the direction of research by endogenously affecting market structure, such that there could be situation in which the market for invention leads to too much work on "quick" projects like re-purposed drugs and too little work on long-run projects like vaccines.16©International Monetary Fund. Not for Redistribution…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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What Drives Innovation? Lessons from COVID-19 R&D

Agarwal¹,

Gaulé²

2021

IMF Working Papers

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To examine the drivers of innovation, this paper studies the global R&D effort to fight the deadliest diseases and presents four results. We find: (1) global pharmaceutical R&D activity-measured by clinical trials-typically follows the 'law of diminishing effort': i.e. the elasticity of R&D effort with respect to market size is about ½ in the cross-section of diseases; (2) the R&D response to COVID-19 has been a major exception to this law, with the number of COVID-19 trials being 7 to 20 times greater than that implied by its market size; (3) the aggregate short-term elasticity of science and innovation can be very large, as demonstrated by aggregate flow of clinical trials increasing by 38% in 2020, with limited crowding out of trials for non-COVID diseases; and (4) public institutions and government-led incentives were a key driver of the COVID-19 R&D effort-with public research institutions accounting for 70 percent of all COVID-19 clinical trials globally and being 10 percentage points more likely to conduct a COVID-19 trial relative to private firms. Overall, while economists are naturally in favor of market size as a driving force for innovation (i.e."if the market size is sufficiently large then innovation will happen"), our work suggests that scaling up global innovation may require a broader perspective on the drivers of innovation-including early-stage incentives, non-monetary incentives, and public institutions.

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“…The scale and speed of the COVID-19 R&D has been noted by other observers (e.g. Bryan et al 2020, Le et al 2020.…”

Section: What Was the Size Of Covid-19 Randd Relative To Total Randd?supporting

confidence: 61%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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What Drives Innovation? Lessons from COVID-19 R&D

Agarwal¹,

Gaulé²

2021

IMF Working Papers

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“…In the first three months after the pandemic, the number of scientific papers about COVID-19 was fivefold the number of articles on H1N1 swine influenza [ 3 ]. Similarly, the number of clinical trials related to COVID-19 prophylaxis and treatments skyrocketed [ 4 ]. Thanks to the rapid mobilization of the world scientific community, COVID-19 vaccines have been developed in record time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific research in the life sciences

2022

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The COVID-19 outbreak has posed an unprecedented challenge to humanity and science. On the one side, public and private incentives have been put in place to promptly allocate resources toward research areas strictly related to the COVID-19 emergency. However, research in many fields not directly related to the pandemic has been displaced. In this paper, we assess the impact of COVID-19 on world scientific production in the life sciences and find indications that the usage of medical subject headings (MeSH) has changed following the outbreak. We estimate through a difference-in-differences approach the impact of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific production using the PubMed database (3.6 Million research papers). We find that COVID-19-related MeSH terms have experienced a 6.5 fold increase in output on average, while publications on unrelated MeSH terms dropped by 10 to 12%. The publication weighted impact has an even more pronounced negative effect (-16% to -19%). Moreover, COVID-19 has displaced clinical trial publications (-24%) and diverted grants from research areas not closely related to COVID-19. Note that since COVID-19 publications may have been fast-tracked, the sudden surge in COVID-19 publications might be driven by editorial policy.

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“…Experts have stressed how innovation in the field of pharmaceutical technology (Bryan et al, 2020) should be inspired by fast and frugal innovations (Harris et al, 2020). Indeed, within research and policy fields, there is currently a lively discussion about fast-tracking vaccine development.…”

Section: The Socio-technological Aspects Of Rushed Innovation During mentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation under pressure: Implications for data privacy during the Covid-19 pandemic

et al. 2020

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The global Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in social and economic disruption unprecedented in the modern era. Many countries have introduced severe measures to contain the virus, including travel restrictions, public event bans, non-essential business closures and remote work policies. While digital technologies help governments and organizations to enforce protection measures, such as contact tracing, their rushed deployment and adoption also raises profound concerns about surveillance, privacy and data protection. This article presents two critical cases on digital surveillance technologies implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic and delineates the privacy implications thereof. We explain the contextual nature of privacy trade-offs during a pandemic and explore how regulatory and technical responses are needed to protect privacy in such circumstances. By providing a multi-disciplinary conversation on the value of privacy and data protection during a global pandemic, this article reflects on the implications digital solutions have for the future and raises the question of whether there is a way to have expedited privacy assessments that could anticipate and help mitigate adverse privacy implications these may have on society.

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Innovation During a Crisis: Evidence from Covid-19

Cited by 11 publications

References 19 publications

What Drives Innovation? Lessons from COVID-19 R&D

What Drives Innovation? Lessons from COVID-19 R&D

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific research in the life sciences

Innovation under pressure: Implications for data privacy during the Covid-19 pandemic

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