The COVID-19 pandemic reignited a long-running debate about whether pharmaceutical companies should waive intellectual property (IP) rights for the greater good. Activists, and low- and middle-income countries contend that WTO rules on intellectual property limit developing countries’ access to life-saving pharmaceuticals, and are calling for waivers through formal policy proposals, editorials in scientific publications and op-eds in mainstream media. Pharmaceutical companies, health experts and high-income countries argue that low manufacturing capacity, rather than patents, is the impediment to global vaccination efforts. Even if the patents were waived, in fact, low- and middle-income countries would be unable to manufacture vaccines without the technical expertise of the inventors, or access to critical ingredients that are already in short supply. International engagement over IP protections, manufacturing and distribution will be more beneficial as components of broader commitments to speed vaccine deployment in the near term and build a lasting cooperative framework for pandemic and emerging infectious diseases in the long run

Epidemics are an unpredictable, though, recurrent feature of human history. With seven major outbreaks over the past twenty years, epidemics and pandemics are on the rise, and happening more frequently and closer to one another than before. Lack of funding makes developing countries especially vulnerable to epidemics. In 2017, the World Bank launched pandemic bonds to raise funding that can be deployed rapidly in the case of a pandemic. Coming 106 days after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the bonds’ payout may be only minimally helpful to some of the poorest countries’ efforts to fight the outbreak, and leave the impression that the bonds delivered too little too late. Pandemic bonds remain an important financial tool and, with some restructuring, could fill a crucial gap in global health security, while at the same time continuing to engage with capital markets for the benefit of the poor.

The informal economy is one of the most complex economic and political phenomena of our time. It exists in rich and poor countries alike, and currently employs almost half of the world’s workers, about 1.8 billion people. •At a value of US$10 trillion, the informal economy is the second-largest economy in the world, after the economy of the United States (at US$14 trillion) and before that of China (at US$8.2 trillion). High taxes, labour costs and social security infrastructures, undeclared work and underreporting are among the most powerful drivers of informality. Measures promoting behavioural changes can help counter its growth, even though controls and penalties remain more popular as tools in the fight against the informal economy. The informal sector remains the fastest-growing part of the world economy and we need a better understanding of what it means for business and society and why it is the preferred operating sector for many entrepreneurs.

Italy’s labour market is highly segmented by gender and age with high labour costs, high rates of self-employment and undeclared work, high minimum wages, strong dismissal constraints and uneven job opportunities between Northern and Southern regions. Italy has experienced three decades of reforms aimed at liberalising its labour market, boosting competitiveness and introducing flexibility to address low productivity and weak employment dynamics. The 2014 Jobs Act is Italy’s latest market labour reforms aimed at rationalising employment protection legislation, improving the effectiveness of social protection and boosting female and youth participation in the labour force. Labour market data for the first 18 months of the implementation of the Jobs Act point to positive upward trends for both employment and job creation as well as to a decrease in unemployment.

The middle class has a special role in economic, political, and social thought, but social scientists seem unable to agree on how to define or measure it. This article stems from an ongoing Johns Hopkins University project on populist and autocratic attitudes worldwide analysing World Values Survey (WVS) data to see what they reveal about the middle class–democratization nexus. Estimates suggest that between 1.4 and 2 billion people are middle class worldwide, with the largest shares found in North America (338 million), Europe (664 million), and Asia (525 million). Data from 4 consecutive rounds of the WVS for a panel of 30 countries from 1995 to 2015 do not support the theory that rising incomes are associated with increasingly open forms of political discourse and citizens’ stronger political attitudes and participation.