This critical examination reveals how international bankers and investors exploit pandemics as investment opportunities, highlighting the risks of relying on “innovative finance.” In a crisis-driven world, financial players transform catastrophes like pandemics into tradable securities. The book provides a unique ethnography of World Bank bonds aimed at addressing significant global health issues by enticing investors to bet on future crises. Award-winning medical anthropologist Susan Erikson explores the origins of this phenomenon and questions who bears responsibility for the consequences faced by individuals when pandemics are treated like gambling ventures. With over 300,000 miles traveled for research, Erikson takes readers from West Africa's red-clay roads to the financial hubs of New York City and London, sharing stories of people, interests, and the rationale behind pandemic bonds. This original and timely work offers a lively interdisciplinary perspective, using vibrant prose to illuminate the challenges of modern global health finance solutions. Aimed at a smart general audience concerned about capitalism's impact on health, it appeals to financiers, politicians, economists, global development professionals, healthcare workers, and anyone seeking to understand capitalism's influence on our care for one another during crises.
Susan Erikson Boeken
