arbitrage boundaries treasury bills and covered interest parity abstract this paper uses the covered interest parity relationship to define upper and lower arbitrage boundaries on domestic treasury bill t bill rates adapting the methodology for estimating frontier functions empirical tests are specified to determine whether the arbitrage boundaries provide a binding constraint on the behavior of the domestic t bill rate empirical evidence is presented for the covered canadian t bill rate which indicates that at various times the us t bill rate has been a binding lower boundary and the euro us ollar deposit rate has provided a binding upper boundary

direct estimation of synergy a new approach to the diversity performance debate this study examines the linkages between relatedness and synergy in the context of diversification among u s pharmaceutical firms for the period 1960 1980 rather than assume as in the entropy herfindahl and concentric indices of diversification that the levels of synergy generated by different related combinations of business units are identical we estimate synergy directly using a modified version of the concentric index in addition to estimating synergy using capital market performance of the firm as a whole we examine the effects of nondrug diversification on the innovative productivity of firms pharmaceutical divisions alone our two main findings are that production relatedness such as that between drugs and chemicals in fact did not imply synergy over the period of our study and that the patterns of synergy for different types of relatedness shifted over time with the industry life cycle

a new look at the returns and risks to pharmaceutical r d this study investigates the returns to r d for 100 new drugs introduced into the united states during the decade of the 1970s in contrast to prior studies it incorporates several significant structural changes that have occurred in the pharmaceutical industry during the 1980s these include higher real drug prices and a greater degree of generic competition a major finding is that the return on r d for the average new drug is approximately equal to the 9 percent industry cost of capital however the performance of new drugs introduced during the latter half of the 1970s was markedly better than that of early 1970s introductions this latter finding is consistent with the more rapid rate of industry growth in real r d expenditures the study also finds that the variation in returns is highly skewed with only the top 30 drugs covering mean r d costs on a fully allocated basis finally it is shown that real drug price increases in the 1980s were necessary for the average new drug introduction to recover its r d costs

asymmetric international minimum quality standards and vertical differentiation this paper develops a two country model of a vertically differentiated duopoly that spans two countries which are not integrated without additional costs equilibrium qualities prices profits and consumer s surplus are compared when 1 minimum quality standards are identical and 2 standards differ across countries both markets turn out to be connected by the quality choices of the two firms both firms prices in the two countries and their profits are lower whereas consumer s surplus and the two offered qualities are higher in both countries if no firm is forced out of the country s market with the more demanding minimum quality standard copyright 1995 by blackwell publishing ltd

exchange rates inflation and the sterilization problem germany 1975 1981 when the goals of internal and external macroeconomic equilibrium are in conflict sterilized intervention in the foreign exchange market may provide an independent policy instrument through which the central bank can resolve its dilemma in the short run this paper is concerned with the west german bundesbank s use of sterilization during the recent years of exchange rate flexibility the paper asks whether the bundesbank pursued sterilization during the years 1995 1981 and whether sterilized foreign exchange intervention exerts a significant influence on the exchange rate in the german case estimation of a stylized bundesbank reaction function suggests an affirmative answer to the first of these questions to assess the efficacy of sterilized intervention a structural portfolio balance model of german asset markets and prices is estimated dynamic perfect foresight simulations of the empirical model are used to ascertain whether imperfect substitutability between foreign and domestic bonds is sufficient to allow the bundesbank to attain independent internal and external goals over the short run of about a month the model s verdict is that the bundesbank has little if any power to influence the exchange rate over that time span without altering current or expected future money market conditions this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

do residential customers respond to hourly prices evidence from a dynamic pricing experiment this paper uses the results of a dynamic pricing experiment for households in the district of columbia to determine whether the reduction in demand associated with an hourly price signal is economically different from the demand reduction associated with an equivalent price signal that is four times longer in duration for both regular and all electric customers the percentage demand reduction associated with a given percentage increase in the hourly price is approximately equal to the percentage demand reduction associated with the same percentage price increase of a much longer duration

the dynamics of technological innovation the sector of antibacterial medicines abstract this is an empirical and historical study of the dynamics of technological innovation in antibacterial medicines a key sector of the pharmaceutical industry it is based on an analysis of all the innovations that were introduced over the period 1935 1987 from prontosil the first sulphonamide through penicillin and the semisynthetic antibiotics to the monobactams and the quinolones of the mid 1980s in the historical section we describe the influence that antibacterial medicines have had on the structure and research intensity of the innovating companies and through them on the pharmaceutical industry and its geography we also describe the catalytic role played by government agencies and universities in the empirical section the innovations are evaluated in terms of originality and market performance and are classified into four technological trajectories their distribution over time and among technological trajectories companies and countries the relation between originality and market performance of individual innovations the interplay between social needs market demand and technological innovation the role of market successful radical innovations in the launching of technological trajectories the orientation of subsequent academic and industrial research and the establishment of corporate technology traditions provide insights in both innovation theory and the dynamics of technological innovation

the evolution of the industrial organisation of the production of knowledge this work elaborates the notion of localised technological knowledge based upon the distinction between information competence and knowledge and analyses the emergence of the new knowledge industry the evolution of the organisation of knowledge production is analysed through four stylised modes scientific entrepreneurship institutional variety vertical integration and technological cooperation the new trends towards the growth of knowledge intensive business service industries are detected and underlined they are considered as the outcome of the institutional formation of a market for knowledge based upon a process of increasing appropriability of localised knowledge based on the blending of generic scientific information and competence and growing scope of applicability via computercommunication systems deverticalisation of research activities from the boundaries of corporations the specification of a demand for technological competence and the specialising of independent firms in the production of technological competence and knowledge

strategizing by firms in the presence of markets for resources strategizing by firms from the resource based view is concerned with the process through which firms acquire a distinctive bundle of resources that is costly and time consuming for competitors to duplicate or imitate a central question facing any firm therefore is its strategy for accumulating the resources that underpin its production activities in this article the process of resource accumulation is discussed as one involving potentially both internal resource development and external resource acquisition from the perspective of the strategic issues involved in making a choice between these options emerging markets for technologies and know how through licensing and other forms of resource exchange have opened up new avenues through which firms may jostle for advantage the article is concerned with three major aspects of this process illustrating the discussion with cases from biotechnology and pharmaceuticals first the strategizing by firms around the internal development vs external sourcing issue is discussed as informed by the practices of leading firms and how these lend greater variety of strategic options for firms second the potential competitive advantages as well as disadvantages to be secured by firms through the process of external sourcing as compared with the well known potential advantages accruing to incumbents through internal development such as time compression diseconomies and causal ambiguity and third the criteria to be used by firms to strategically evaluate resources individually as contrasted with the strategic evaluation of the resource bundle or totality these criteria it is argued turn on the issues of marginal value contribution resource complementarities and synergies resource variety and transferability involving intellectual property issues successful firms it is argued expand their options through blending internal resource accumulation with external resource leverage thereby deepening their distinctive dynamic capabilities this approach extends the framework of the rbv enabling it to encompass resource driven schumpeterian competition and such aspects of industrial dynamics as specialization modularization and imitative challenge copyright 2003 oxford university press

lessons from the united states s antitrust history abstract the united states s antitrust policy spans more than 100 years for most of its history the united states has had the toughest antitrust laws and enforcement policies of any country in the world a shift to a more permissive attitude with regard to antitrust matters has occurred in recent years however this paper traces the changes in antitrust policy that have occurred and the concurrent shifts in thinking among economists on antitrust questions following this review the paper offers a critical appraisal of both the economic underpinning of the new learnings on antitrust matters and the changes in antitrust policy that have accompanied them it closes with a discussion of the implications of the analysis for european antitrust competition policy

paying not to go to the gym how do consumers choose from a menu of contracts we analyze a novel dataset from three u s health clubs with information on both the contractual choice and the day to day attendance decisions of 7 752 members over three years the observed consumer behavior is difficult to reconcile with standard preferences and beliefs first members who choose a contract with a flat monthly fee of over 70 attend on average 4 3 times per month they pay a price per expected visit of more than 17 even though they could pay 10 per visit using a 10 visit pass on average these users forgo savings of 600 during their membership second consumers who choose a monthly contract are 17 percent more likely to stay enrolled beyond one year than users committing for a year this is surprising because monthly members pay higher fees for the option to cancel each month we also document cancellation delays and attendance expectations among other findings leading explanations for our findings are overconfidence about future self control or about future efficiency overconfident agents overestimate attendance as well as the cancellation probability of automatically renewed contracts our results suggest that making inferences from observed contract choice under the rational expectation hypothesis can lead to biases in the estimation of consumer preferences

does early child care affect children s development we study how early child care ecc affects children s development in a marginal treatment effect framework that allows for rich forms of observed and unobserved effect heterogeneity exploiting a reform in germany that induced school districts to expand ecc at different points in time we find strong but diverging effects on children s motor and socio emotional skills children who were most likely to attend ecc benefit in terms of their motor skill development children who were least likely to attend ecc gain in terms of their socio emotional skill development especially boys and children from disadvantaged families such as those with low education or migration backgrounds simulating expansions of ecc we find that a moderate expansion fosters motor skills for all children and language skills for boys and immigrant children a progressive expansion of ecc improves all children s socio emotional development but neither their motor skills nor their language skills

pioneers imitators and generics a simulation model of schumpeterian competition a computer simulation model in the tradition of evolutionary models of technical change is developed in this paper it focuses on r d competition in new product introductions and is based on data for the u s pharmaceutical industry during the 1970s the sensitivity of innovation levels to the rate of generic competition regulatory review time and patent life is examined in the computer simulation experiments these factors are found to have significant long run effects on industry structure and innovation levels

the short run and long run effects of behavioral interventions experimental evidence from energy conservation we document three remarkable features of the opower program in which social comparison based home energy reports are repeatedly mailed to more than six million households nationwide first initial reports cause high frequency action and backsliding but these cycles attenuate over time second if reports are discontinued after two years effects are relatively persistent decaying at 10 20 percent per year third consumers are slow to habituate they continue to respond to repeated treatment even after two years we show that the previous conservative assumptions about post intervention persistence had dramatically understated cost effectiveness and illustrate how empirical estimates can optimize program design jel d12 d83 l94 q41

the function of authority in transaction cost economics abstract this paper questions the transaction cost characterization of observed authority relations as efficient governance structures various inadequacies in the transaction cost account of work organization and the limits of firm size are traced to its neglect of the possibility that authority may be abused opportunistically this exemplifies a more general propensity in the transaction cost literature that of explaining economic organization in functionalist terms with little attention to the causal mechanisms through which efficient governance structures might actually arise three such mechanisms are considered but none is found to provide an adequate rationale for the imputation of efficiency to observed structures

present at the biotechnological revolution transformation of technological identity for a large incumbent pharmaceutical firm abstract management of successful incumbent firms experience difficulty in recognizing the need for and effecting change in the firm s technological identity after an externally generated shift in the industry s technological trajectory nonetheless some large pharmaceutical firms have transformed their technological identity in drug discovery from a chemical random screening to biological drug design model we report how one of the world s most successful incumbents transformed technically sophisticated senior management championed the transformation it was achieved primarily through hiring many new scientists embodying biotechnology existing personnel acquired the expertise or left continual self transformation is part of the corporate ethos some differences in incumbent and entrant technology remain incumbents use a wider range of techniques consistent with their complementary assets publication and incentive compensation policies are driven by the need to attract and retain the best scientists professor firm collaborations are ubiquitous often non public and best identified in quantitative analyses by co publishing collaborations with new biotechnology firms are used primarily to substitute for developing internal expertise judged of marginal value no drug discovery collaborations exist with other major incumbents we identify another seven or eight incumbents similarly transforming as indicated by top scientific talent and patenting success

contract duration and relationship specific investments empirical evidence from coal markets this paper examines the importance of specific relationship investments in determining the duration of coal contracts negotiated between coal suppliers and electric utilities data for 277 coal contracts are used to perform the analysis the results provide strong support for the view that buyers and sellers make longer commitments to the terms of future trade at the contract execution stage and rely less on repeated bargaining when relationship specific investments are more important

discontinuities and senior management assessing the role of recognition in pharmaceutical firm response to biotechnology despite an increasing emphasis on the role of senior management cognition in shaping organizational action there have been few attempts to link top management mental models to strategic choice in the face of discontinuous innovation this paper uses 23 years of data covering 15 major pharmaceutical firms to explore the degree to which each firm s response to the revolution in biotechnology was shaped by the senior team s recognition of biotechnology s importance controlling for a number of important alternative explanations we show that recognition may be an important predictor of action suggesting that cognition at the most senior level can play a critical role in shaping established firms response to discontinuities copyright 2003 oxford university press

political vs currency premia in international real interest differentials a study of forward rates for 24 countries abstract different approaches to quantifying the degree of capital mobility for a cross section of currencies particularly saving investment correlations and tests of real interest parity have appeared to show a surprisingly low degree of financial integration we use a new data set forward rate data for 24 countries including many small industrialized countries and seven ldcs to decompose the real interest differential into two parts the covered interest differential or political premium and the real forward discount or currency premium the latter in turn can be decomposed into the exchange risk premium and expected real depreciation we find a high degree of capital mobility across political boundaries for most of the g 11 countries plus hong kong and singapore for our sample period of 1982 to 1987 even for most of the other ldcs and smaller industrialized countries for which covered interest parity clearly fails the political premium is not as big a component of the real interest differential as the currency premium france would appear to have higher capital mobility than most by the criterion of real interest differentials but is seen in fact to have low capital mobility by the criterion of covered interest differentials a clear example of the superiority of the latter criterion

default effect versus active decision evidence from a field experiment in los alamos abstract we examine how consumers respond to distinct combinations of preset defaults and subsequent economic incentives a randomised controlled trial is implemented to investigate the demand reduction performance of two electricity pricing programmes opt in and opt out critical peak pricing both the intention to treat and the treatment on the treated are more pronounced for customers assigned to the opt in group and the opt in treatment effects are relatively more persistent over repeated interventions this result suggests that the opt in type active enrolment itself had an impact on customers subsequent behaviour and made them more responsive to the treatment interventions moreover only the opt in treatment has significant effects beyond the treatment time window our results therefore highlight the important difference between an active and a passive decision making process we also estimate a marginal treatment effect model to inform the external validity of our experiment

covered interest arbitrage in the 1970 s abstract this paper provides an empirical overview on covered interest arbitrage during the flexible exchange rate regime of the 1970 s it estimates the cost of transactions in foreign exchange and security markets and shows that these costs account for most of the deviations from parity

international interest rate linkages and the exchange rate regime abstract return differentials between instruments denominated in canadian dollars and instruments denominated in american dollars are investigated the study compares the properties of return differentials in the period of fixed exchange rates during the 1960s and in the period of flexible exchange rates during the 1970s and 1980s both real and nominal return differentials are investigated the results indicate that the change in exchange rate regime is not associated with a change in the average level of ex post return differentials between canada and the united states models which predict ex ante return differentials from available information in a rational expectations framework show a surprisingly large amount of structural stability across the regime change the major impact of the flexible exchange rate regime is on the variance of ex post return differentials and not on the average level of ex post or ex ante return differentials jel e42 e58 g15

product line expansion and resource cannibalization abstract diversification research argues that new products are more successful when they leverage a firm s intangible resources which may support multiple activities without engendering rivalry for their use however numerous complementary resources may also be needed to exploit a firm s intangibles if these resources are in limited supply or if it takes time to acquire and assimilate additional resource capacity then new products may impose costs on existing products by cannibalizing the services of firm resources our analysis of product introductions within the pharmaceutical industry provides evidence of resource cannibalization and suggests that product market experience helps offset some of these costs

the strategic alliance of the biotechnology firm this article applies the relevant theories of firm organization and inter firm relationships in the high tech environment to explain the institutional reasons that firms choose between internal or external approaches particularly this study tries to understand to what extent and in what way strategic alliances have impacts on individual firms organizational structure financial structure and firms activities also it tries to find out what type of firms tend to benefit most from alliances and thus use more inter firm agreements the theoretical findings are that due to liquidity constraint and asymmetric information reasons young research intensive firms need to use more alliances to survive in the fast changing high technology industry the empirical analysis employs 3 year panel data and finds that the results are consistent with the theoretical predictions

advertising and competition in the ethical pharmaceutical industry the case of antihypertensive drugs abstract this paper uses data on the majority of name brand antihypertensive drugs marketed in the united states during 1988 93 to test the hypothesis that advertising decreases the price elasticity of demand in the pharmaceutical industry this is the first study to directly estimate the effects of drug product promotion on the price elasticity of demand in this industry we find strong evidence of an advertising effect in particular detailing efforts the salient means for product promotion in this industry systematically lower price sensitivity given the inverse relationship between elasticity of demand and price it is likely that consumers pay higher prices as a result of the advertising that occurs in this industry our findings are thus consistent with hurwitz and caves who find evidence that advertising inhibits entry into this market but in contrast to earlier research that found no anticompetitive effect

pricing dynamics in the pharmaceutical industry pricing behaviour has traditionally been approached from the concept of long term static equilibrium this paper argues that this approach is inappropriate at least with respect to the pharmaceutical market because new innovation and patent expiry lead to a continually changing environment a theoretical analysis argues that price change will depend on the age of the therapeutic class the degree of brand loyalty the extent to which it is sold over the counter rather than on prescription and measures of competition the empirical results based on an analysis of the leading twenty five therapeutic class of pharmaceuticals in the usa the uk west germany and france over the period 1981 1988 tends to support the theoretical conclusions although it would appear that government controls in the uk are distorting profit maximizing behaviour more than in the other three countries

strategic pricing of new pharmaceuticals this paper provides empirical evidence on the leading factors affecting the prices of new pharmaceuticals both at introduction and after 4 6 and 8 years most important is the extent of therapeutic advance embodied in a new product for drugs which represent important therapeutic gains launch prices can be two or three times those of existing drugs used for the same purposes while drugs that largely duplicate the actions of currently available products are typically priced at comparable levels in addition the number of branded substitutes has a substantial negative effect on launch prices which reflects the importance of competitive pressures duplicate products thereby play an important economic role in pharmaceutical markets

a theory of rational addiction we develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to maximize utility over time strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past consumption of the good on current consumption such powerful complementarities cause some steady states to be unstable they are an important part of our analysis because even small deviations from the consumption at an unstable steady state can lead to large cumulative rises over time in addictive consumption or to rapid falls in consumption to abstention our theory also implies that cold turkey is used to end strong addictions that addicts often go on binges that addicts respond more to permanent than to temporary changes in prices of addictive goods and that anxiety and tensions can precipitate an addiction

a transaction costs analysis of innovations in the organization of pharmaceutical r d abstract this paper uses transaction costs economics to analyze the increasing importance of vertical disintegration of r d by large pharmaceutical and chemical firms first it discusses three characteristics of the research based pharmaceutical industry then it shows that market failures related to long term joint venture r d contracts between firms and university laboratories are less significant than appears at first and may account for their striking increase over the past fifteen years

institutions supporting technical advance in industry elsewhere 1982 economists beliefs that modern capitalism is a fine innovation generating machine have no intellectual grounding in contemporary neoclassical theory the twin theorems take technologies as given the apparent effectiveness of capitalism in this arena must reside in characteristics and mechanisms other than those featured in the microeconomic theory textbooks in our book we attempt to analyze these it also is true that the capitalist engine is a much more complicated one than many economists seem to think i presently am

departures from interest rate parity further evidence abstract daily data are used to test the theory of interest parity between the irish pound and three major currencies the tests are carried out within the context of a model suggested by pippenger 1978 and the statistical methodology used is spectral analysis the pippenger model emphasises the relaxation of two important implicit assumptions the exogeneity of the interest differential and the assumed infinitely elastic supply of arbitrage funds which have tended to characterise previous studies we attempt to reconcile our results which are generally supportive of interest parity with the exchange control arrangements currently in force in ireland

pricing profits and technological progress in the pharmaceutical industry the decades old debate over pharmaceutical industry prices profits and innovation has again intensified a number of events coalesced to refocus public interest on pharmaceuticals contributing to public concern were bureau of labor statistics price index increases for pharmaceuticals far outpacing those for the products of other industries another prominent characteristic of the pharmaceutical industry has been its extraordinarily high reported profitability this article examines the phenomena that precipitated the current pharmaceuticals debate their historical antecedents and the principal questions at issue in the author s considered judgment a pell mell march toward regulation of pharmaceutical industry pricing could seriously impair the industry s incentives for investment in new products

political influence and regulatory policy the 1984 drug legislation i introduction in the late 1970s and early 1980s dissatisfaction with the length complexity and cost of the drug approval process combined with rising prescription drug prices led to congressional attempts at reform these focused on two issues to compensate the developers of new drugs for the increasing costs and delays associated with fda approval and to increase the availability of generic drugs until 1984 these reform attempts failed i use the structure induced equilibrium sie theory of shepsle and weingast 1981 to examine why regulatory reforms prior to 1984 were stalemated and why the 1984 drug legislation was ultimately enacted my results show that prior to 1984 the preferences of the members of the key congressional committees were such that the proposed bills could not beat the status quo however changes in both membership and turnover on the house subcommittee on health and the environment combined with a change in the majority party in the senate led to a situation in which the 1984 drug legislation could defeat the status quo in both the house and the senate the drug price competition act facilitated the market entry of generic drugs following patent expiration by allowing generic versions of brand name drugs patented after 1962 to use an abbreviated new drug application anda 1 the patent term restoration act extended the patent lives of brand name drugs for up to five years to compensate for patent life lost during the fda approval process initial unsuccessful legislative reforms were introduced into congress in 1978 79 and 1981 82 but no legislative reforms were passed until 1984 these earlier unsuccessful reform efforts raise the following questions first why did the status quo prevail until 1984 as the legislative equilibrium second what endogenous changes occurred to produce the new legislative equilibrium in 1984 while much of the previous literature about the pharmaceutical industry has focused on the efficiency and distributive effects of public policy i focus on the theory of regulatory policy 2 the sequence of legislative actions leading to the 1984 drug legislation shows how competing interest groups representing brand name and generic drug firms forced legislators to face trade offs in accommodating their interests i look most closely at the members of the house and senate committees with jurisdiction over pharmaceutical regulation issues data representing brand name and generic firm or consumer interests are used to construct estimates of legislative preferences ideal points 3 then the sie theory is used to generate predictions about legislative behavior and outcomes to help explain the initial failure of regulatory reform in 1979 and its ultimate success in 1984 the results from the analysis explain both why the status quo prevailed in 1979 and why it was overturned in 1984 the analysis also illustrates how the industry and consumer groups represented on the relevant committees can protect their interests this occurred in both 1979 when the senate passed legislation favorable to the generic drug industry and 1981 when legislation supported by the brand name drug firms was passed in each case representatives of the unfavored interest group were able to block legislation in the house legislation was possible only when the majorities on the house and senate committees could agree on a single policy which could defeat the status quo in both committees moreover this policy provided benefits to both sets of industry interests represented by committee members the paper is organized as follows in sections ii and iii i describe the theory of political outcomes used in this analysis and provide some background on pharmaceutical regulation prior to the reforms the estimation of congressional ideal points is discussed in section iv sections v and vi examine congressional responses to the 1979 drug reforms and interest group activity in the 1980s

the measurement of intellectual property rights protection this research improves upon empirical studies that examine the measurement of intellectual property rights ipr protection prior measures examine only one type of law or lack a component that addresses the actual enforcement of these laws the measure presented here uses three types of ipr laws and enforcement components for them

estimating marginal returns to education this paper estimates marginal returns to college for individuals induced to enroll in college by different marginal policy changes the recent instrumental variables literature seeks to estimate this parameter but in general it does so only under strong assumptions that are tested and found wanting we show how to utilize economic theory and local instrumental variables estimators to estimate the effect of marginal policy changes our empirical analysis shows that returns are higher for individuals with values of unobservables that make them more likely to attend college we contrast our estimates with iv estimates of the return to schooling

pricing patent loss and the market for pharmaceuticals dustry the drug price competition and patent term restoration act of 1984 very clearly reflects the determination of policy makers to simultaneously address issues of price control and technical progress the 1984 act increased returns to innovation by extending the period of patent protection to take into account the time between receipt of a patent and food and drug administration fda approval of a drug for sale in the market the 1984 act also reduced the testing requirements for approval of new generic brands of existing chemical entities thus reducing entry barriers in markets where patents have expired the expected outcome from eased entry conditions for generic substitutes was substantially enhanced price competition and lower prices for brand name drugs in fact prices for brand name drugs have tended to increase following entry by generics wagner and duffy 28 examined price changes for top selling generics and name brands they show substantial price increases in brand name prices accompanying large reductions in generic prices as entry of generics occurs grabowski and vernon 9 examined data on 18 major orally administered rug products subject to generic competition between 1983 and 1987 and found that the name brand price increased by an average of 7 one year subsequent to generic entry and 11 two years following generic entry

knowledge is less power experimental evidence from residential energy use abstract imperfect information about product attributes inhibits efficiency in many choice settings but can be overcome by providing simple low cost information we use a randomized control trial to test the effect of high frequency information about residential electricity usage on the price elasticity of demand informed households are three standard deviations more responsive to temporary price increases an effect that is not attributable to price salience conservation extends beyond pricing events in the short and medium run providing evidence of habit formation and implying that the intervention leads to greenhouse gas abatement survey evidence suggests that information facilitates learning jel d12 d83 l11 l94 q41 q54

the relative impact of actual and potential rivalry on firm profitability in the pharmaceutical industry this paper estimates the effects of actual and potential rivalry on profitability of firms in the u s pharmaceutical industry during the 20 year period 1963 82 the results show that during the 1960s actual rivalry among the sampled firms did not materially affect firm profitability but that during the 1970s competition among incumbents had an increasingly adverse effect on their profitability the results also show that potential competition significantly reduced drug firms profitability during the entire 20 year period copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

the dynamics of technological innovation the case of the pharmaceutical industry abstract this paper examines the mechanisms and dynamics of the process of innovation in companies and sectors of the chemical industry it is based on analysis of science and technology output indicators namely patents and innovations evaluated in terms of originality and in the case of innovations in terms of market success as well radical innovation ri is identified as the kingpin for the evolution of technologies in both the micro and macro economic context not only because it provides a model for imitation but also because it turns out to be more profitable for the innovating companies than incremental innovation at the micro economic level this paper examines the significance of diverse driving forces which lead a company to the launching of projects aiming at ri measures the length of commitment to such projects and describes the dynamic effects generated by the introduction of a successful ri and how they affect the company s subsequent r d and market orientation at the macro economic level this paper identifies the stages of youth growth maturity and decline of the subsectors of the chemical industry examines the distribution of ri and market successful innovations over the development of a sector describes the influence of market demand and capital investment on technological advance and compares the development of national chemical industries the paper concludes with an account of the dynamics of technological innovation in the chemical industry over the period 1930 1985 which is based on the empirical findings of the previous sections

generic entry price competition and market segmentation in the prescription drug market abstract this paper studies the effects of generic entry on post patent price competition for 18 prescription drugs recently exposed to competition an independent validating test of the generic competition paradox is conducted using a newly created data set each generic entrant is associated with an average 1 increase in the branded price the one way error component model accounts for intermolecular competition market segmentation and endogeneity of entry and finds branded prices increasing by 2 alternative definitions of entry suggest that price competition is confined to the generic market the unique payer type feature of the data offers empirical evidence supporting market segmentation

the optimal organization of research evidence from eight case studies of pharmaceutical firms abstract in this paper we examine the results of interviews of scientists and executives in eight pharmaceutical companies on the issue of how best to organize the rd when the firm is playing catch up in an area of science where it is weak and when governmental policies force firms to carry out r d in particular locations

products liability and prescription drug prices in canada and the united states this article provides the first estimate of the degree to which product liability costs in this country contribute to the observed differences in pharmaceutical prices between the united states and canada measures of liability risk show up as large and strongly significant explanatory variables in regressions of u s and canadian price differences in the sample used here accounting for liability effects reduces the mean of the predicted price difference distribution by about one half and the median by about one third these reductions come about by virtually eliminating the upper tail of the distribution though liability effects cannot account for all the observed price differences in this sample they clearly must play a role efforts to explain international price differences in drug products which do not take account of the effects of differing legal systems are missing an important effect and suffer from a substantial omitted variable bias

does disability insurance receipt discourage work using examiner assignment to estimate causal effects of ssdi receipt abstract we present the first causal estimates of the effect of social security disability insurance benefit receipt on labor supply using all program applicants we use administrative data to matc

more than intent a bundling model of mne sme interactions abstract as a counterpoint to prashantham and birkinshaw i present an alternative model of mne sme cooperation where either type of firms can take the role of content provider or distributor i argue that mnes will interact with smes when there are differences in optimal scale between the content creation and distribution stages of the value chain and it is not feasible or efficient for either party to vertically integrate between these two stages i then build two 2 2 bundling models one in which the sme provides content and the mne distributes it and another with the reverse configuration in these 2 2s the axes are the transactional properties of the two complementary inputs content and distribution that mnes and smes bundle to create value i show that these models can explain the forms taken by mne sme cooperation and their dynamics

evaluating public programs with close substitutes the case of head start this paper empirically evaluates the cost effectiveness of head start the largest early childhood education program in the united states using data from the randomized head start impact study hsis we show that head start draws a substantial share of its participants from competing preschool programs that receive public funds this both attenuates measured experimental impacts on test scores and reduces the program s net social costs a cost benefit analysis demonstrates that accounting for the public savings associated with reduced enrollment in other subsidized preschools can reverse negative assessments of the program s social rate of return estimates from a semi parametric selection model indicate that head start is about as effective at raising test scores as competing preschools and that its impacts are greater on children from families unlikely to participate in the program efforts to expand head start to new populations are therefore likely to boost the program s social rate of return provided that the proposed technology for increasing enrollment is not too costly

purchasing power interest rate parities and the modified fisher effect in presence of tax agreements abstract this paper shows that in a world with different rates of inflation and taxation in the presence of an international tax agreement the simultaneous coexistence of the purchasing power parity mechanism the interest rate parity mechanism and the revised fisher effect is impossible the analysis reveals a possible inherent instability of interest rates and exchange rates generated by inflation this instability is greater the larger the tax rate differentials among countries

the persistence of treatment effects with norm based policy instruments evidence from a randomized environmental policy experiment during a 1977 fireside chat president jimmy carter famously appealed to american hom eowners to set their thermostats at 65 degrees to help conserve supplies of natural gas and fuel oil norm based strategies are commonly used to influence a range of private behaviors with public consequences including alcohol and drug use gambling and resource consump tion in the last decade these strategies increas ingly emphasize the use of social comparisons to motivate behavioral changes efforts to use such comparisons build upon leon festinger s 1954 social comparison theory which posits that individuals validate the appropriateness of an action or thought through comparison to others a subsequent literature in social psychol ogy argues that strategies based on this theory provide an effective means to promote environ mental conservation see e g tim kurz ngaire donaghue and ian walker 2005 p wesley schultz et al 2007 noah j goldstein robert b cialdini and vladas griskevicius 2008 jessica m nolan et al 2008 in this literature the work by schultz et al 2007 has proven most influential and forms the basis of opower s well cited social comparison approach for

the law of one price in the eurocurrency market abstract this paper studies the interest rate parity arbitrage condition in the eurocurrency market in the period 1967 to 1980 the results suggest that this market is relatively efficient with few opportunities for arbitrage profits turbulance associated with external shocks to this market is relatively short lived the evidence indicates that the foreign exchange and eurocurrency markets respond rapidly to monetary shocks

the secrets of industry are in the air industrial cooperation and the organizational dynamics of the innovative firm abstract the purpose of this exploratory work is to contribute to the elaboration of an analytical framework appropriate to the study of the organizational forms involved in technological cooperation the approach used herein is one of formulating those properties of the process of integration and association of resources that are not based on the economics of transaction costs these properties suggest that the integration and the association of resources are necessary for the creation of technology but are also a source of irreversibility after having defined the concept of organizational balance of innovative firms which corresponds to the possibility of reconciling specific resources with the reversibility of technological capacity i will attempt to show that the forms of cooperation as much intra as inter firm constitute the basic principle of organization and functioning of innovative firms i shall be able thus to give a positive reading of technological cooperation on the basis of an economic analysis of organization

the generalized roy model and the cost benefit analysis of social programs the literature on treatment effects focuses on gross benefits from program participation we extend this literature by developing conditions under which it is possible to identify parameters measuring the cost and net surplus from program participation using the generalized roy model we nonparametrically identify the cost benefit and net surplus of selection into treatment without requiring the analyst to have direct information on costs we apply our methodology to estimate the gross benefit and net surplus of attending college

the tylenol incident ensuing regulation and stock prices the much publicized tylenol incident in 1982 led to stringent packaging regulations for over the counter pharmaceutical drugs the sudden incident and the swift progression of associated events offer a unique opportunity to assess the wealth effects of the resultant regulations the market value of common stock of johnson johnson makers of tylenol declined by approximately 29 percent amounting to 2 31 billion although other firms in the industry also suffered significantly their share price decline did not occur around the tylenol incident but occurred around the subsequent packaging reg ulation proceedings on average 28 other pharmaceutical firms analyzed in this study experienced a decline of 310 million per firm or a total of about 8 68 billion the results suggest that the regulation had a significant negative effect on the common stock prices of firms in the pharmaceutical industry

estimating the impact of the r d tax credit on strategic groups in the pharmaceutical industry abstract the economic recovery and tax act of 1981 provided a 25 percent tax credit for increases in research and experimentation expenditures previous studies have shown considerable controversy about the effectiveness of various tax credits this study focuses on the response of the strategic groups in the pharmaceutical industry to the credit four strategic groups were formed using different levels of research intensity research sales and relative cash flow margin cash flow sales the change in research intensity following enactment of the tax credit was estimated the analysis found that the tax credit caused an increase in r d expenditures in addition the r d tax credit appears to have contributed to increased competitive r d spending among the firms in the pharmaceutical industry

adverse selection and inertia in health insurance markets when nudging hurts this paper investigates consumer inertia in health insurance markets where adverse selection is a potential concern we leverage a major change to insurance provision that occurred at a large firm to identify substantial inertia and develop and estimate a choice model that also quantifies risk preferences and ex ante health risk we use these estimates to study the impact of policies that nudge consumers toward better decisions by reducing inertia when aggregated these improved individual level choices substantially exacerbate adverse selection in our setting leading to an overall reduction in welfare that doubles the existing welfare loss from adverse selection jel d82 g22 i13 a number of potential impediments stand in the way of efficient health insur ance markets the most noted of these is adverse selection first studied by akerlof 1970 and rothschild and stiglitz 1976 in insurance markets prices reflect the expected risk costs of the insured pool whether the reason is price regulation or private information when insurers cannot price all risk characteristics riskier consumers choose more comprehensive health plans this causes the equilibrium prices of these plans to rise and healthier enrollees to select less comprehensive coverage than they would otherwise prefer

product innovation product market competition and persistent profitability in the u s pharmaceutical industry increasingly strategy scholars are exploring the relationships between innovation competition and the persistence of superior profits sustained high profitability may result when a firm repeatedly introduces valuable innovations that service previously unmet consumer demands while the returns to the firm from each innovation may erode over time innovation ensures that overall the firm maintains a high performance position at the same time sustained high profitability may also accrue to firms that innovate less often but effectively avoid the competition that otherwise erodes high returns this paper elaborates these relationships before presenting an empirical analysis of the effects of differential innovative propensities and differential rates of competition on pharmaceutical firms abilities to sustain profit outcomes that are above those earned by competing firms the analysis which is situated within the u s pharmaceutical industry finds support for the expected relationship between high innovative propensity and sustained superior profitability but no support for a link between persistence and the ability to avoid competition copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

practical implications of game theoretic models of r and d the purpose of this paper is to survey recent game theoretic models of research and development and to ask whether they yield practical implications or testable hypotheses the papers i will be discussing have been written or published within the past five years they have a good deal in common relying upon similar assumptions and building upon each other because of this the literature surveyed here may seem narrow and some relevant work has probably been inadvertently omitted i apologize for these omissions for want of space i will not discuss the normative conclusions of this literature

active vs passive decisions and crowd out in retirement savings accounts evidence from denmark using 41 million observations on savings for the population of denmark we show that the effects of retirement savings policies on wealth accumulation depend on whether they change savings rates by active or passive choice subsidies for retirement accounts which rely on individuals to take an action to raise savings primarily induce individuals to shift assets from taxable accounts to retirement accounts we estimate that each 1 of government expenditure on subsidies increases total saving by only 1 cent in contrast policies that raise retirement contributions if individuals take no action such as automatic employer contributions to retirement accounts increase wealth accumulation substantially we estimate that approximately 15 of individuals are active savers who respond to tax subsidies primarily by shifting assets across accounts 85 of individuals are passive savers who are unresponsive to subsidies but are instead heavily influenced by automatic contributions made on their behalf active savers tend to be wealthier and more financially sophisticated we conclude that automatic contributions are more effective at increasing savings rates than subsidies for three reasons i subsidies induce relatively few individuals to respond ii they generate substantial crowd out conditional on response and iii they do not increase the savings of passive individuals who are least prepared for retirement jel codes h2 h3

optimal defaults and active decisions defaults often have a large influence on consumer decisions we identify an overlooked but practical alternative to defaults requiring individuals to make an explicit choice for themselves we study such active decisions in the context of 401 k saving we find that compelling new hires to make active decisions about 401 k enrollment raises the initial fraction that enroll by 28 percentage points relative to a standard opt in enrollment procedure producing a savings distribution three months after hire that would take 30 months to achieve under standard enrollment we also present a model of 401 k enrollment and derive conditions under which the optimal enrollment regime is automatic enrollment i e default enrollment standard enrollment i e default non enrollment or active decisions i e no default and compulsory choice active decisions are optimal when consumers have a strong propensity to procrastinate and savings preferences are highly heterogeneous financial illiteracy however favors default enrollment over active decision enrollment

the political economy of the pharmaceutical industry e conomicsis a practical science since its inception as an independent discipline it has probed the major policy issues of the day the topics that aroused the interests of its practitioners have generally been those that presented government officials with critical choices the modern literature on the economics of the pharmaceutical industry is no exception this body of material originated with the investigations of the kefauver committee in late 1959 public interest was aroused by the spectacle of confrontation between committee and industry the record made by this committee and its successors grew to tens of thousands of pages as claims and counterclaims were offered regarding industry conduct and performance the primary line of attack concerned pharmaceutical prices and profits the committee demonstrated that prices generally exceeded direct costs of manufacturing for 22 major pharmaceutical firms in 1958 costs of goods sold were merely 32 percent of total sales u s senate report 1961 p 31 the committee argued that this fact alone demonstrated the presence of monopoly power while the substantial difference between revenues and production costs permitted high expenditures on research and development it also paid for even higher selling outlays moreover reported rates of return after taxes during this period on the order of 21 to 22 percent exceeded twice the average for all manufacturing the industry replied that on the contrary prices were low relative to the value afforded consumers and high returns on successful products were required to balance the losses from the large numbers of unsuccessful ones the relevant concept of marginal costs according to the industry position must include the costs of developing and marketing new products and therefore prices were not excessive at all although it admitted earning substantial profits the industry argued that without these returns research outlays would be limited and the number of new drugs reduced the committee countered that little of social value arose from industry research molecules were manipulated and the new drugs that resulted were therapeutically similar to those already on the market indeed it suggested that much