What the Coronavirus Means for the World’s First Pandemic Bonds

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Every week, hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway take you on a not-so-random walk through hot topics in markets, finance and economics.

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Back in 2017, the World Bank issued the world’s first pandemic bonds. The bonds are meant to shift some of the financial risk of a global pandemic on to investors, but they’ve been criticized for having ‘triggers’ that are too tough to generate payouts. Now, as the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, it’s worth looking at how these bonds are structured and what they can tell us about the future of public-private partnerships in finance. In this episode of Odd Lots, we speak with Olga Jonas of the Harvard Global Health Institute, and a former economist at the World Bank with significant pandemic experience. She gives us her take on the bonds as well as the economic impact of big epidemics.

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