Published Paper/Working Paper
Yun-Peng Lu, Jui-Chung Yang, Academia Economic Papers, 49(4), 495–526, 2021.
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We study Taiwan’s air quality after the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-
19) pandemic in January 2020. We find a significant reduction, about 14.6%, in the daily
PM2.5 concentration after the COVID-19 outbreak. Our paper controls for both year effects and time-of-year effects by comparing the average change over time in the PM2.5 levels before and after the outbreak of COVID-19 in the period from October 2019 to April 2020, to the average change over time from October to April in 2016/17, 2017/18, and 2018/19, and is robust to the policies and seasonal patterns in each year. Among the 14.6% decrease in PM2.5 concentration, we find that about 12.9 percentage points are related to the air quality improvement in China, Japan, and Korea and the reduction of transboundary air
pollution.
The Effect of FDA Oversight on Drug Manufacturers
Emily Cuddy, Yun-Peng Lu, and David B. Ridley
We ask which establishments are inspected more frequently and which establishments have more citations. Foreign establishments have an advantage of being warned before the inspection, thus they are more likely to get a better outcome compared to domestic establishments. Unobserved establishment quality might be positively correlated with the time elapsed, which also affects the inspection outcome of the current period. We use a probit model with two instrumental variables to test the hypotheses. The first one is the distance between the establishment and the nearest district office and the second is the number of available investigators in the region in that year, excluding the number of investigators sent to the establishment.
Emily Cuddy, Yun-Peng Lu, and David B. Ridley, Health Affairs. 42(12): 1758-1766. 2023.
During the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) halted inspections of most overseas drug
manufacturing establishments. Looking at data from the period 2012–22,
we observed steep declines in both foreign and domestic inspections in
2020. By 2022, numbers of inspections remained well below prepandemic
levels, with a 79 percent decrease in foreign inspections and a 35 percent
decline in domestic inspections compared with 2019. There was no
corresponding reduction in drug manufacturing or imports. Also, the
resources allocated per inspection surged, although the FDA’s overall
budget and staffing remained steady. Finally, citations rose drastically,
despite all establishments being given advance notice of inspections. The
findings of our study underscore the pressing need to explore alternative
methods for ensuring drug safety.