Scope and objective

Together with Boston University and the TSE Health Center, we are organizing a one-day conference on the economics of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and antibiotic innovation, to be held at the Toulouse School of Economics on 15 June 2027.

Antimicrobial resistance combines two failures that economists are well placed to study: positive and negative externalities in the use of existing antibiotics, and a broken market for the discovery of new ones, partially driven by the imperative to be good stewards. The conference aims to bring together recent research on this problem - from the economics of prescribing and stewardship practices and the value of diagnostic tools, to market failures in antibiotic R&D and the policy instruments proposed to address them, including intellectual property design, pricing and procurement rules, subscription (delinked) payment models, transferable exclusivity vouchers, and advance market commitments such as the Market Shaping Accelerator for a diagnostic for neonatal sepsis.

Our objective is to provide a forum for exchanging research findings that offer valuable insights for health policy, particularly in connection with health investment and innovation.

The program will consist of 8 to 12 presentations of original research papers (20 minutes each), together with a special session of around 10 short "lightning" presentations of 3 minutes each followed by a poster session, a keynote, and a 90-minute interactive session for attendees to generate ideas for future economic projects on antibiotics, intended to guide the UN's emerging Independent Panel on Evidence for Action on AMR.

Research themes

We welcome theoretical, empirical, models, and policy-oriented papers on any topic related to AMR and antibiotics, including but not limited to:

• financing of innovation, R&D incentives, intellectual property and patents; push and pull mechanisms for antimicrobial development

• antimicrobial effectiveness as a public good, common pool resource, infrastructure, or related frameworks

• the clinical and economic burden of AMR

• integrating One Health and environmental determinants of AMR into existing models

• new datasets on AMR

• effectiveness of interventions into antibiotic use, prescribing behavior, stewardship policies, and innovation

• diagnostics, surveillance, or precision medicine

• pricing, competition and regulation of antibacterial markets, including procurement, reference pricing, parallel trade, and performance-based payment systems

• clinical trial regulation and market authorization

Global data and perspectives are most welcome, including the lower-resource populations that bear the greatest burden from AMR. While the focus is on bacterial infections, other microbial infections are not out of scope.

Submission information

Full papers should be submitted by the following deadline: January 16^th, 2027.
You’ll be asked to indicate if you would also like your paper to be considered for the short-presentation session, which will also include a poster.
Acceptance decision: no later than February 5^th, 2027

Please submit here

Date of the conference

The conference will begin on the morning of Tuesday, June 15^th and conclude with a dinner in the evening.
Participants will be welcome to attend the 5th Health Economics Conference on June 16 and 17, 2027 at TSE.

Registration

Registration is free but mandatory.
We kindly request participants who need to cancel after registration to inform us as soon as they know.

Funding

The conference will provide coffee breaks, lunch, and dinner.
The conference will also cover accommodation and travel expenses (economy class) for presenting speakers who are from lower-resource settings and graduate students. If funding is needed, an expectation of travel expenses should be given at the submission stage.

Organizing Committee

Pierre Dubois (TSE, CEPR)
Ilaria Natali (University Carlos III Madrid and TSE)
Kevin Ootterson (Boston University)
Jean Tirole (TSE, CEPR)