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Contractual arrangements under technological uncertainty: Analysis of pharmaceutical and biotechnology collaborations
No full textThis dissertation investigates the conditions that shape the governance structure of contractual agreements and how different contract types address the potential problems that can arise in R&D partnerships under technological uncertainty. The motivation for this study arises from the emergence of new forms of R&D organization to cope with challenges as well as opportunities created by rapid technological change. This dissertation demonstrates the significance of technological uncertainty in determining the observed variety of contractual arrangements in the biotechnology industry. It also shows that the returns from collaborative arrangements as measured by the number of successful patents differ among various contract types. The first part of this research focuses on biotechnology alliances with pharmaceutical companies involving drug discovery research. It demonstrates how advances in technology affect the structure of R&D contracts. Using contractual data over time, it is shown that newer technologies associated with higher uncertainty result in the choice of more equity participation by the pharmaceutical partner and more hierarchical contractual arrangements. This result supports the transaction cost arguments that as contractual difficulties arise, allying firms are more likely to choose a more hierarchical governance form over simpler arrangements. The second part of the dissertation investigates the significance of external R&D investments by large pharmaceutical companies to their overall innovation process. The performance of collaborations on the overall R&D productivity are evaluated in terms of their impact on successful patent production. This study measures the innovative returns to R&D collaborations separate from in-house R&D resources and possible knowledge spillovers. Using a panel data set of large pharmaceutical companies, a knowledge production function is estimated. The results indicate that the implied long-run elasticity of successful patent output with respect to all active R&D alliances is lower than the elasticity estimate with respect to in-house R&D investments. In addition, marginal returns to R&D collaborations differ among various contractual types, in terms of their contribution to patent production process. It is also shown that knowledge spillovers by competitors contribute to patent production, but scientific publications hinder it
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The Essays on the Structure of Property Rights to Natural Resources
Full text linkIn this dissertation I study how the structure of property rights is shaped by the benefits and costs of defining and enforcing rights along various dimensions to inform current policy debates by better understanding the economic structure of the resource problems we face and saying something about the opportunity costs of policy proposals to alter resource use. I do this by combining formal models of natural resource use with detailed econometric analysis of novel historic and modern data sets which I build using GIS.In Chapter 1, Gary Libecap and I analyze the economic determinants and effects of prior appropriation water rights that were voluntarily implemented across a vast area of the US West, replacing common-law riparian water rights. We model potential benefits and test hypotheses regarding search, coordination, and investment. Our novel dataset of 7,800 rights in Colorado, established between 1852 and 2013 includes location, date, size, infrastructure investment, irrigated acreage, crops, topography, stream flow, soil quality, and precipitation. Prior appropriation doubled infrastructure investment and raised the value of agricultural output beyond baseline riparian rights. The analysis reveals institutional innovation that informs contemporary water policy.In Chapter 2, Dominic Parker and I study how subdivision of land rights can affect natural resource use. Land contains multiple natural resources that are efficiently managed at different spatial scales, either concurrently or over time. We explain how subdividing the commons to promote one resource (agricultural land) inadvertently creates anticommons problems for another (shale oil). We provide empirical tests from a natural experiment on the Bakken, one of the world's largest booming oil fields. Before oil was discovered, U.S. land allotment policies created a mosaic of private, tribal, and fragmented ownership to shale on and around the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. We compare horizontal drilling patterns across over 40,000 parcels on and off the reservation. We find that subdivision has caused economically significant delays in compensation to shale owners, as parcels surrounded by tribal lands are more quickly and fully exploited. The evidence demonstrates how subdivision can inadvertently delay spatially coordinated resource use and reduce resource rents.In Chapter 3, Gary Libecap and I examine the emergence of spontaneous claims to inframarginal rents in open-access resources. Although early models of open-access in economics predicted full rent dissipation as homogeneous agents exploited the resource, later theory and empirical observations indicated persistence of inframarginal rents. The existence of inframarginal rents under open-access has been recognized in the literature, but agents’ incentives to invest in de facto institutions to protect rental streams from competitors has not been explored. These institutions include local property rights, specialized production, and restricted information sharing. Moreover, there has been no recognition of how these informal arrangements might contribute to observed resistance by inframarginal-rent earners to externally imposed schemes in order to reduce aggregate rent dissipation. Proponents are high-cost agents, who earn low or zero rents. High-cost agents ought to be able to compensate low-cost agents for a shift to a new property regime if the shift makes them better off than they were under open-access. Empirically, however, this appears not to happen and formal open-access persists. We develop a simple framework to show why ``willingness to pay'' and ``willingness to accept'' do not overlap and that institutional change is not Pareto-improving for those who have adjusted well to open-access. If agents are heterogeneous in search and production costs, and the resource is large and heterogeneous in quality, then low-cost parties search for the most productive locations and apply their superior skills and develop human and physical capital to earn inframarginal rents. We then apply this framework to historical experiences in oil and gas and fisheries
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Financing the Central Arizona Project: Econometric estimations and second-best prices
No full textResearchers have continually questioned the economic viability of the Central Arizona Project (CAP). The completion of CAP in 1993 triggered the repayment obligation to the federal government. Despite enormous federal subsidies and the existence of several revenue sources other than from water sales the annual repayment obligation caused CAP's total expenses to exceed total costs for the two years following 1993. Using various combinations of repayment terms this study solves for pricing schedules that generate annual revenues equal to annual costs. Using estimates of water demand and water supply, price schedules are determined by maximizing consumer surplus subject to a revenue constraint. Under the current repayment terms the initial increases in water prices are less than twenty percent. After the first year increase, prices decline in real terms over the 50 year repayment horizon. In some cases future CAP prices actually drop below current water prices in real terms. Using alternative repayment terms that partially remove large federal subsidies results in first year percentage increases of up to fifty-two percent. In summary, the massive federal subsidies inherent in CAP keep the second-best prices from becoming exorbitantly high. The relatively small impact to the individual water user from the initial increase in prices suggests that CAP will likely remain financially viable. Based on the decreasing trends exhibited by the second-best prices it is possible that CAP may someday generate significant excess revenues to be used to further develop, improve and maintain Arizona's water resources
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
The Assignment of Property Rights on the Western Frontier: Lessons for Contemporary Environmental and Resource Policy
No full textI examine the assignment of private property rights during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to five natural resources on federal lands in the Far West. Assigning property rights required adaptation from established, eastern practices. The resulting property rights and their long-term welfare effects inform over-fishing, excessive air pollution, and other natural resource and environmental problems. Allocations based on local conditions, prior use, and unconstrained by outside government mandates were most effective in both addressing the immediate threat of open-access and providing a longer-term basis for production, investment, and trade. Initial faulty property allocations and path dependencies are discussed.This is what stretched westward from the 100th meridian, this complex, misunderstood two fifths of the continental United States where men had come before law arrived and where before there were adequate maps there were warring interests, white against Indian, cattleman against sheepman and both against nester, open range notions against the use of the newly invented barbed wire, Gentile against Mormon, land rights against water rights, appropriation rights to water against riparian rights to water, legitimate small settler against speculator and land-grabber. The public domain as Powell knew it was all of these, its only unity the unity of little rain.Wallace StegnerStegner, Beyond the 100th Meridian, p. 218.
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