AEI's research on global health addresses diseases like AIDS and malaria, pandemics, mortality and morbidity rates, drug patenting, counterfeit products, health in the developing world, and the successes and failures of governments and international organizations in these areas.

Increasing competition generally decreases product prices. But in the case of pharmaceuticals, this is only beneficial if competitor products are therapeutically equivalent (bioequivalent). One measure of quality control is a consistently made product, examined in detail in this paper. A comprehensive study of drug samples in African and Asian countries--assessed for variability by spectrometer--suggests that registered products perform notably better than unregistered products.