Download This PaperDesigning Future Pandemic Financing: Lessons from World Bank’s Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility
11 Pages Posted: 23 Dec 2022 Last revised: 25 Dec 2022
Date Written: December 12, 2021
Abstract
This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the World Bank Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) while it lasted with the aim of providing lessons for future insurance-linked pandemic financing. The paper argues that with diseases capable of becoming a pandemic posing existential threat to the world the limitation of the funding for combating such viruses to only International Development Association (IDA) eligible countries was a flawed approach that put the world at risk by excluding non-IDA countries or countries not recognized as states under international law but still exist without the capacity to combat a pandemic. The paper further argues that the trigger mechanism for activating the insurance and cash windows of the PEF after several months of a disease being declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) and reaching certain number of deaths threshold was equally a flawed approach that undermined the integrity of the PEF.
Keywords: Pandemic Financing; World Bank; Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility
JEL Classification: I1, I13, I14, I18, K33, K34
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation