We have the ability now to arrange global economic institutions so that poverty declines to a fraction of what it is now.

For the present system to work, poor people must be excluded from the innovation, because if they could get access at an affordable price, then affluent people would find ways to buy it cheaply as well - and then the innovator would be poorly rewarded and introductions of new medicines would decline.

Poverty persists, essentially, because the people at the bottom - the bottom quarter and also the bottom half - see the gains from the rising global average income wiped out by severe declines in their relative share.

There is at the global level a very small number of actors who can meaningfully weigh in on global institutional design, who are able - through powerful governments and most effectively through the government of the United States - to exert substantial influence on international negotiations, which are routinely conducted behind closed doors.

We live in a world where economic positions - income and wealth - are very unevenly distributed, and this leads to the widespread persistence of poverty.

In 88 poor countries for which we have data, in each and every one of the 88, the PPP for food shows that poor people can buy less food than you would expect from the PPP that the World Bank is using. The reason for this is obvious on reflection. It has to do with the fact that most foodstuffs are tradable commodities: basic foodstuffs, such as rice, flour and beans, can easily be conveyed across national borders and their prices will therefore roughly mirror the exchange rates among currencies.

Whatever we, as prospective participants unaware of our specific features, would desire society to be like is what, morally speaking, we ought to institute.