The rich-to-poor vaccine donation game: When will self-interested countries donate their surplus vaccines during pandemics?

When will self-interested vaccine-rich countries voluntarily donate their surplus vaccines to vaccine-poor countries during a pandemic? We develop a game-theoretic approach to address this question. We identify vaccine-rich countries’ optimal surplus donation strategies, and then examine whether these strategies are stable (Nash equilibrium or self-enforcing international agreement). We identify parameter ranges in which full or partial surplus stock donations are optimal for the donor countries. Within a more restrictive parameter region, these optimal strategies are also stable. This implies that, under certain conditions (notably a total amount of surplus vaccines that is sufficiently large), simple coordination can lead to significant donations by strictly self-interested vaccine-rich countries. On the other hand, if the total amount that the countries can donate is small, we expect no contribution from self-interested countries. The results of this analysis provide guidance to policy makers in identifying the circumstances in which coordination efforts are likely to be effective.