India's vaccine pricing being complicated/politicized.
Three simple principles to follow.
1. Govt. should pay manufacturers reasonable price. This is not the time for haggling and creating uncertainty for private sector, domestic or foreign 1/
2. There should be only ONE price for vaccine jabs all over India. That price should be ZERO. So, vaccines should be free for all
Differentiation and complexity are unethical, unnecessary, and difficult to implement.
Free vaccines for all will avoid vaccine politicization 2/
3. The Center-NOT states-should bear full fiscal "costs" of vaccines.
Why?
--Virus does not respect state borders.
--Center has better access to resources than states
--Fiscal "costs" are trivial compared to lives saved and economic activity preserved n/
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Huge thanks to #EconTwitter for engaging enthusiastically and constructively with this piece by Devesh Kapur and me on under-representation of developing country institutions in development economics.
Some preliminary ideas for taking discussion forward 1/
1/n Second (& final) piece in @IndianExpress by @shoumitro_c & me where we evaluate the twin prescriptions of India’s inward turn: favouring domestic demand over exports (macro) and raising barriers to encourage domestic production (trade): indianexpress.com/article/opinio…
2/n We argue for more openness in areas of opportunity for India, eg. clothing. A key policy is reducing import tariffs on man-made yarn, a critical input to most dynamic export segment. Chart shows these tariffs for key competitors: India’s doubled recently & highest again