From Scarcity to Abundance: Government and Private Initiatives to Manage the Allocation of N95 Masks in the U.S. During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper examines the structure, behavior and performance of the N95 respirator market in the U.S. before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-early 2022). It focuses on the behavior and performance of government and private sector organizations in the allocation of scarce supplies of N95 respirators during the pandemic in the U.S. The experience with the supply, demand, allocation, rationing, and pricing of N95s during the first two years of the pandemic provides instructive examples of how the public and private sectors can work in tandem with regulatory support rather than coercion to achieve widely accepted public health goals. Of particular interest is the adoption of voluntary private market segmentation, rationing and price maintenance policies during roughly the first year of the pandemic, led by the dominant U.S. manufacturer of N95s.