The following research out of the Chicago Business School is worth a quick skim, or if you want a better digest, check out Foreign Policy’s view on this. Many of you will be familiar with this line of thinking, but it is not yet widely discussed in public health circles (as far as I can tell). As we know the bottom line is that giving something away for free is not always an optimal solution – economics/pricing, creating markets, and branding (along with a multitude of other factors) all impact behavior and use of products no matter where you go in the world. In our own research with Aurolab, we were told that when they actually tried to price their synthetic lenses for cataract surgery at a lower price people started questioning the quality (even though these two things were unrelated). I have some questions about extending the Chicago research on water purification products (time frame, sustainability, etc.), but it is good to see more work in this arena: