Who Develops Innovations in Medicine for the Poor? Trends in Patent Applications Related to Medicines for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria and Neglected Diseases

Who invents medicines for the poor of the world? This question becomes very important where the WTO allows low income countries to be unbound by the TRIPS agreement. This agreement concerns medicines for infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. These diseases cause serious damage to low income countries. Under these circumstances, some scholars wonder if anyone will continue innovative activities related to treating these diseases. This paper sought to answer this question by collecting and analyzing patent data of medicines and vaccines for diseases using the database of the Japan Patent Office. Results indicate that private firms have led in innovation not only for global diseases such as HIV/AIDS but also diseases such as malaria that are spreading exclusively in low income countries. Innovation for the three infectious diseases is diverse among firms, and frequent patent applications by high-performing pharmaceutical firms appear prominent even after R&D expenditure, economies of scale, and economies of scope are taken into account.

Financial permeation as a role of microfinance : has microfinance actually been helpful to the poor?

This article is distinct in its application of the logit transformation to the poverty ratio for the purpose of empirically examining whether the financial sector helps improve standards of living for low-income people. We propose the term financial permeation to describe how financial networks expand to spread money among the poor. We measure financial permeation by three indicators related to microfinance institutions (MFIs) and then examine its effect on poverty reduction at the macro level using panel data for 90 developing countries from 1995 to 2008. We find that financial permeation has a statistically significant and robust effect on decreasing the poverty ratio.

Pro-poor growth or poverty trap? : estimating intergenerational income mobility in rural Philippines

Using an intergenerational database covering nearly a quarter of a century, we explored the degree of intergenerational income mobility among individuals who had grown up in rural Central Luzon, the Philippines. We found that the intergenerational income elasticity is significantly lower than unity, at roughly 0.23, indicating that the average income growth rate is higher for children born to poorer families. The detailed analysis, however, revealed that its magnitude significantly varies across percentiles in a U-shape. The results provide supporting evidence of multiple equilibria or poverty trap.

How does contract design affect the uptake of microcredit among the ultra-poor? : experimental evidence from the river islands of Northern Bangladesh

Despite the professed claims of microcredit alleviating poverty, little is known about what kind of credit contract is suitable for extremely poor households, also called the ultra-poor. To fill this knowledge gap, we initiated a field experiment in the river islands of northern Bangladesh, where a substantial portion of dwellers could be categorized as ultra-poor due to cyclic floods. We randomly offered four types of loans to such dwellers: regular small cash loans with one-year maturity, large cash loans with three-year maturity both with and without a one-year grace period, and in-kind livestock loans with three-year maturity and a one-year grace period. We compared uptake rates as well as the determinants of uptake and found that the uptake rate is the lowest for the regular contract, followed by the in-kind contract. Contrary to prior belief, we also found that the microcredit demand by the ultra-poor is not necessarily small, and in particular the ultra-poor are significantly more likely to join a microcredit program than the moderately poor if a grace period with longer maturity is attached to a large amount of credit, irrespective of whether the credit is provided in cash or in kind. This paper provides evidence that a typical microcredit contract with one-year maturity and without a grace period is not attractive to the ultra-poor. Microfinance institutions may need to design better credit contracts to address the poor's needs.

Housing the Rangoon poor : Indians, Burmese, and town planning in colonial Burma

In Rangoon/Yangon, the ex-capital city of Burma/Myanmar, there still remain many old buildings today. Those buildings were constructed in the British colonial period, especially from the 1900s to the 1930s, and formed Rangoon's built environment as something modern. In focusing on the period before and after the inauguration of the Rangoon Development Trust in 1921, this paper describes how the colonial administrative authorities perceived urban problems and how their policy and practice affected urban society. It also suggests the possibility that competition for habitation among the lower strata of Rangoon society was a cause of the serious urban riot in 1930.