This chapter explores the gap between technology’s promise and our ability to realize the global public goods of vaccines and medicines. This gap stems from significant market disincentives in the R&D process, along with clinical trial challenges and regulatory hurdles. Yet a range of innovative financing strategies to delink R&D costs from vaccine and drug prices, along with well-designed and ethically run clinical trials, can fill this gap, facilitating development of urgently needed medical countermeasures.

This chapter covres: monetary policy acquires more importance; interest rates generally fall; markets for goods and money become global, facilitating borrowing; global markets are considered more efficient in the absence of disruptions, bottlenecks, and nationalistic policies; the faster growth of some large but poorer countries leads to a better global income distribution; public spending generally resists major attempts at reduction; tax levels stop rising; the good period ends suddenly in 2008 with the financial crisis and the Great Recession; this puts an end to market fundamentalism; the pandemic of 2020 and the war in Ukraine conclude the period of reduced government role; public debts reach record levels and inflation returns, creating major dilemmas for central banks on how to react; and interest rates start going up after a long period of low rates and relaxed monetary policy.

Description: The existing global institutional architecture continues to promote anarchic behavior by individual countries. There is no truly global and effective global institution to promote desirable global public goods. Major policies have remained national, with still too little coordination, and raising standards of living is still the most important objective, in spite of the impact that that may have on the environment or on income distribution. Global warming is still not having the impact that it ought to have on global policies. Monetary and fiscal policies have continued to be focused on growth. Correctives are clearly needed to better deal with equity and with environmental policies. The end result of this trend is unknown and worrisome. Clearly it has become more difficult than it was in the nineteenth century to accept the view that the future is correlated with progress and that the standard of living of humans will inevitably continue to improve.

Climate change has often been analyzed as a tragedy of the commons, a social dilemma where cooperation could make everyone better off but incentives induce individuals, businesses, and nations to keep on emitting greenhouse gasses. However, the simple game theory model of tragedy of the commons, Prisoner’s Dilemma, is just one of many possible models for climate conflict and cooperation. The topology of payoff swaps in 2 x 2 games shows relationships between games, including their potential transformations. Changes in the ranking of outcomes can transform Prisoner’s Dilemma into a Stag Hunt with the potential for win-win cooperation or Chicken with a shared fear of catastrophe, and then create convergent incentives that yield the best for both in Concord. Models of climate negotiations about whether to abate or pollute can be compactly displayed in a table based on how payoffs from symmetric games combine to form asymmetric games. Maps for transforming climate dilemmas reveal symmetric and asymmetric pathways to climate cooperation through fear of catastrophe, or assuring cooperation that is best for both, or adjusting incentives even if a polluter always want to avoid abating while the other pollutes. Maps for transforming climate games show the diversity of climate dilemmas and potential pathways to cooperation.

An increasingly popular alternative to traditional aid is a “global public goods” (GPG) approach to reducing poverty and countering other global challenges. Having explained the origins and meaning of the concept, which is based on a rationale derived from welfare economics, I present two specific examples: REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and a global initiative for producing a vaccine against Covid-19. I briefly summarize debates about the merits of a GPG approach and how Scandinavian countries are increasingly adopting it, even though this may result in their level of aid falling, since GPG funding may not count. I conclude that if, as seems likely, many countries are slow to accept the shared responsibility that a GPG approach implies, then the reputation, and perhaps even identity, of the Scandinavian people may nevertheless be enhanced if they establish a position – as they have so far often done – among those in the vanguard.

Climate change is a well-recognized common concern of humankind. On that basis, this chapter explores the implications of the Common Concern doctrine upon climate motivated rulemaking and implementation in the trade regime. The particular aspect of the climate change problem dealt with here is that of low-carbon technology diffusion. It is proposed that based on this doctrine, the prevalent narrative of trade and technology diffusion issues be reframed in a way that prioritizes the need for resolving existing market failures preventing new technologies from being adopted, especially those of high price, absence of incentives and lack of financing options. Going further, the chapter then closely analyses two potential trade measures – (i) carbon pricing with cross-border recycling of revenue for technology support, and (ii) better rates of official export credit support for low-carbon technologies. It is found that the doctrine of Common Concern, apart from being an excellent normative framing device, can aid better understanding of the WTO rules, and also inspire reforms thereof to facilitate diffusion of clean technologies.

This chapter argues that international monetary stability is an underprovided global public good under the current design of the International Monetary System. It proposes to apply the emerging doctrine of Common Concern of Humankind (Common Concern) as a methodological approach. This chapter starts by exploring the concept of monetary stability at the different levels of governance. It is followed by a description of the doctrine of Common Concern. It continues with an analysis of the three-dimensional approach proposed by this doctrine starting with the duty to cooperate in monetary affairs both from a top-down approach (international level of governance) and a bottom-up approach (central banking cooperation). The chapter continues by examining domestic obligations concerning monetary stability with an emphasis on the special role of the central banks and also by examining some cases of unilateral actions and issues of extraterritoriality in the pursuit of monetary stability. Lastly, it offers some remarks on the most controversial aspect of the doctrine that relates to securing compliance with the obligations that may emerge from an accepted Common Concern of international monetary stability.

Because of its transboundary effects and because states will be the primary actors, large-scale solar geoengineering and its governance are matters of international relations. The divergent problem structures among the responses to climate change help explain extant and likely action. Abatement and negative emissions technologies are aggregate effort global public goods and consequently undersupplied. Solar geoengineering would be a single best effort and a mutual restraint global public good, implying that it might be oversupplied. Uni- or minilateral deployment would be a problem if it were premature or contrary to the international community’s consensus. Solar geoengineering could pose other challenges to international relations such as legitimate decision-making, potential disagreements, cost-sharing, and security risks. Its sudden and sustained termination would have severe negative environmental impacts, but the probability of this is uncertain and may be low. Some economists have explicitly modeled states as rational actors to understand, explain, and predict their behavior in this domain. Given the approach’s limitations, these results should be interpreted with caution.