Prizes for research have produced results. In 1959, British industrialist Henry Kremer offered a 50,000 pound prize for the first substantial flight of a human-powered airplane. In 1977, Paul MacCready's Gossamer Condor won the prize. The next year, MacCready won a 100,000 pound prize by flying the Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel entirely under human power. Whirlpool won with a line of refrigerators that were 70 percent more efficient than their competitors.
Prizes provide strong incentives.
Unlike government-funded research, researchers get money only if their research succeeds. They propose that once a vaccine is developed, philanthropic foundations or the government might play a role in its distribution to people in poverty-stricken nations. Patents might be bought out with lump-sum payments. Also, the government or a foundation might provide incentives by committing to the purchase of a certain quantity of the vaccine at a certain price. Glennerster and Kremer have produced a brilliant proposal for ways to save millions of the world's poor.