1,721,022 research outputs found
R&D Investments fo Neglected Diseases could be Sensitive to the Economic Goals of Pharmaceutical Companies
No full textA fundamental problem with neglected diseases is how to induce pharmaceutical companies to invest resources for developing effective treatments. A recent debate focused on the role of economic incentives represented by monetary transfers to the firms. In this article I focus on the economic goals of pharmaceutical companies, as determinants for R&D effort. In particular, within a stylized framework, the work compares expected profit and expected productivity maximization, arguing that the former in general induces higher R&D investments than the latter. Therefore, as it is currently the case, when pharmaceutical firms focus on productivity, appropriate economic incentives might be needed for them to invest in R&D for neglected diseases. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd
Best Value for Money in Procurement
No full textA gradual change on how to evaluate successful procurement, in both the private and the public sector has occurred in recent years. Indeed, in so far as economic efficiency is concerned from a price-only criterion for measuring success, decisions have shifted to a multi-criteria approach where various dimensions of quality, as well as price, are considered. The most common way to express such a shift is to say that procurement should deliver "best value for money" (BVM). That is, to award the contract, both monetary and non-monetary components of an offer are to be considered. Whether in competitive bidding or negotiations, BVM is typically formalized by a scoring formula, namely a rule for assigning dimensionless numbers to different elements of an offer, often expressed in different units of measurement. The contract would then be awarded according to the total score obtained by a bid. The main goal of this paper is to present a critical overview of some main themes related to the notion of BVM, discussing few typical forms of scoring rules as a way to formalize the procurer's preferences. © 2013 by PrAcademics Press
Correlation Learning and the Robustness of Cooperation
No full textn the stage game Prisoner's Dilemma one line of research which is pursued to justify the cooperative outcome is based upon some idea of correlation. This paper aims at testing whether correlation could support a cooperative behavior in the long run, by embedding the infinitely repeated game within a simple evolutionary framework. In particular, the main theorem states that just two born cooperative agents might remain cooperative forever with strictly positive probability. This robustness result appears to be particularly strong since the model allows cooperative agents to switch strategy and start defecting from a certain time onward, but not vice versa. (C) 2000 Academic Pres
Combinatorial advertising internet auctions
Full text linkThe paper extends the Generalised Second Price (GSP) auction, adopted by search engines to allocate advertising slots, considering the possibility that players could use images to advertise their products rather than text only ads. Since images occupy more than one slot in the template the extension consists in allowing players to bid for a bundle of slots, as well as for a single slot, where an image could be accommodated. For this reason the auctions we consider are combinatorial, though with constrained combinations. Indeed, to accommodate an image or a video slots will have to occupy consecutive positions. Unlike existing work, we assume that slots assignment is determined endogenously by the players, as the outcome of a Nash Equilibrium. This implies that the number of slots assigned to text only messages and to images is not predefined by the search engine. Based on the analysis, we argue that alternative ways to extend GSP can give rise to rather different slots allocation and revenues for the search engine
Hyperbolic Discounting can Represent Consistent Preferences
Full text linkAmong non Exponential Discounting (ED) models, introduced to capture time inconsistent choices, Hyperbolic Discounting (HD) recently gained particular relevance. This paper points out that, for some particular payoff structures, HD can also represent consistent preference
Dynamic consistency in extensive form decision problems
No full textIn a stimulating paper, Piccione and Rubinstein (1997) argued how a decision maker could undertake dynamically inconsistent choices when, in an extensive form decision problem, she has a particular type of imperfect recall named absentmindedness. Such memory limitation obtains whenever information sets include decision histories along the same decision path. Starting from work focusing on the absentminded driver example, and independently developed by Segal (2000) and Dimitri (1999), the main theorem of this article provides a general result of dynamically consistent choices, valid for a large class of finite extensive form decision problems without nature
R&D Incentives for Neglected Diseases
Full text linkNeglected diseases are typically characterized as those for which adequate drug treatment is lacking, and the potential return on effort in research and development (R&D), to produce new therapies, is too small for companies to invest significant resources in the field. In recent years various incentives schemes to stimulate R&D by pharmaceutical firms have been considered. Broadly speaking, these can be classified either as ‘push’ or ‘pull’ programs. Hybrid options, that include push and pull incentives, have also become increasingly popular. Supporters and critics of these various incentive schemes have argued in favor of their relative merits and limitations, although the view that no mechanism is a perfect fit for all situations appears to be widely held. For this reason, the debate on the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches has been important for policy decisions, but is dispersed in a variety of sources. With this in mind, the aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the economic determinants behind R&D investments for neglected diseases by comparing the relative strength of different incentive schemes within a simple economic model, based on the assumption of profit maximizing firms. The analysis suggests that co-funded push programs are generally more efficient than pure pull programs. However, by setting appropriate intermediate goals hybrid incentive schemes could further improve efficiency
The economics of epidemic diseases
Full text linkEpidemic, infectious, diseases affect a large number of individuals across developing as well as developed countries. With reference to some very simple diffusion models, in this paper we consider how available economic resources could be optimally allocated by health authorities to mitigate, possibly eradicate, the disease. Optimality was defined as the minimization of the long run number of infected people. The main goal of the work has been to introduce a methodology for deciding if it would be best to concentrate resources to prevent contact between individuals and with an external source, or to develop a new treatment for curing the disease, or both. The analysis suggests that this depends on the cost functions, that is the available technology, for controlling the relevant parameters underlying the epidemics as well as on the available financial resources. In the case of the recent Ebola outbreak, the suggestions of the model have been consistent with the policies adopted
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