Budget impact analysis of orphan drugs in Belgium: estimates from 2008 to 2013

Objective: This article aims to calculate the impact of orphan drugs on the Belgian drug budget in 2008 and to forecast its impact over the following 5 years.

Method: The 2008 budget impact was calculated by triangulating information derived from multiple Belgian data sources. The 2008–2013 budget impact analysis was based on three scenarios reflecting different levels of growth in the number of registered orphan drugs in the European Union, the number of drugs reimbursed in Belgium, and the average annual cost per patient per drug in Belgium.

Results: The orphan drug budget impact amounted to €66.2 million (or 5% of the Belgian hospital drug budget) in 2008. The impact would increase to €130–204 million in 2013, depending on the scenario.

Conclusions: This static analysis measured orphan drug costs only, assuming that other components of health expenditure do not change over time. The analysis showed that the budget impact of orphan drugs in Belgium is substantial and rising, thereby putting pressure on total drug expenditure. Policy options to address the rising budget impact include pricing linked to return on investment, risk-sharing arrangements and re-appraisal of orphan drug status if additional indications are approved.     

The participant observer in the formation of economic thought Summa Oeconomiae Perlmanensis

This essay addresses issues related to the History of Economic Thought, Comparative Economic Analysis, and Institutional Economics alluded to in Mark Perlman's “The Character of Economic Thought, Economic Characters, and Economic Institutions”. Specifically, some differences between the strands of American Institutionalism and Schumpeterian economics are brought into focus. Against the background of a review, the ideas of a major participant in the historical analysis of economic thought are discussed. The conclusion is that an evolutionary approach to economics would benefit from any attempt to substitute systematic-discursive theorizing for the received genre of an abstract-deductive approach.     

Trends in co-authorship in economics since 1985

It has been often noted (McDowell and Melvin, 1983; Barnett et al., 1988; Piette and Ross, 1992; Sutter and Kocher, 2004) that the share of co-authored papers in economics has been increasing steadily. The purpose of this study is to investigate some of the theories as to why co-authorship has been increasing in the economics profession. Using data on the publication records of faculty at 129 US colleges and universities that offer doctoral degrees in Economics, Poisson and logit regression models are estimated to explain co-authorship. Results indicate that the likelihood of co-authorship is greater for papers that combine quantitative analysis with another field and for papers published in higher quality journals. Further, co-authorship appears to differ in the many subfields of economics, with the field of Economic History and History of Thought (Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) categories N and B) to be the least likely to co-author and the fields of Financial Economics (JEL category G) and Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics (JEL category Q) to be the most prone to co-authorship.     

The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump and Mr Biden

Max Corden and Ross Garnaut published ‘The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump’ in this journal in 2018. This paper examines what has transpired in the US economy against that article. It notes continuity in budget and trade policy from the Trump Presidency to the Biden Presidency. The continuity in macro-fiscal and trade policies is accompanied by a significant departure in the focus of fiscal expansion: Mr Biden's strong support for decarbonisation. The article applies Max Corden's approach to international economics to the question: should Australia emulate Mr Biden's combination of budget, protection and decarbonisation policies?     

Doing a Monty: Who Opened the Door to This Game for Economists?

The Monty Hall three-door, "Let's Make a Deal" game, named after the 1970s television show, is used widely in economics, econometrics, statistics, and game-theory-based teaching, as well as in many other disciplines. Its solutions and underlying assumptions arouse great passion and argument, in both the academic and popular press. Most economists believe that the first popular elucidation of the game was presented by Nalebuff in the Journal of Economic Literature. However, the game and its controversial solution were spelled out in The American Statistician years earlier by Selvin, at the time a young biostatistician at the University of California at Berkeley. Mathematicians give him due credit. The author argues that economists should also recognise his contribution.     

THE EVOLUTION OF SPATIAL ECONOMICS: FROM THÜNEN TO THE NEW ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

This paper presents a review of the evolution of spatial economics over the past two centuries. The focus is on the evolution of what I consider to be the most fundamental theory of spatial economics, i.e., general location theory . The paper starts with a review of Thünen (1826 ), and ends with a review of the New Economic Geography initiated by Paul Krugman in the early 1990s. It is shown that the study of general location theory has been successful at shedding light on many important features of actual spatial economies.     

Does progress matter?

This paper, presented as an addresss to the Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought, argues that writing history may be more interesting if progress is not made the leitmotif. Starting from an examination of early causal accounts of the history of political economy, written in the ninteenth century by Marx, Toynbee, Ingram and Leslie, a plea is made for narratives rather than explanations. Consistent with the former historians of economic thought this may be perceived as eavesdropping on conversations of the past. To understand the richness of these conversations they need to perceive their work not just as a sub-discipline of economics but in a wider interdisciplinary setting.     

A History of the Founding and Early Years of AFEE

During the late 1950s, institutionalists started organizing themselves amid the decline of institutional economics, leading to the 1965 founding of the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE). We analyze the history of the movement to found AFEE and its early years. We use archival evidence, much of it previously unpublished, to provide a detailed history of these early years. We also present an account of AFEE that highlights the role of different interpretations of institutional economics in building the association. In addition, we provide a brief history of the early years of the Journal of Economic Issues (JEI).     

Gordon Tullock and Richard McKenzie. The New World of Economics.

The authors extend the literature on the efficacy of high school economics instruction in two directions. First, they assess how much economic knowledge that California students acquired in their compulsory high school course is retained on their entering college. Second, using as a control group some college students from the state of Washington, where there is no mandate for high school economics instruction, the authors evaluate the impact of California's high school economics mandate on students’ economic literacy when they enter college. The testing instrument is the Test of Economic Literacy (TEL).     

Strong dependence in the real interest rates

The stochastic behaviour of the real interest rates in ten European countries, Canada and the US is examined in this article by means of fractionally integrated techniques. Using a procedure, specifically designed for testing I (d) statistical models, the results show that the real interest rates are more persistent in some countries like France, Belgium or the USA than in others like the UK or Germany.     

比利时行业减排目标与措施（2008-2012年）

为履行《京都议定书》和《欧盟责任分担协议》,比利时必须在2008—2012年完成与1990年相比减排7．5％的目标。2006年9月比利时政府向欧委会递交了《比利时2008—2012年二氧化碳（CO2）排放限额分配国家计划草案》;2008年2月向欧委会递交了《比利时2008—2012年温室气体排放（GHG）限额分配国家额度计划》。本文介绍了该计划的主要内容,其中包括比利时联邦和各大区政府所采取的政策,特别是行业减排的目标和措施,如：能源生产、能耗、建筑、交通、工业、农业、林业及垃圾等。     

Samuelson’s operationally meaningful theorems: reflections of E. B. Wilson’s methodological attitude

This paper sheds new light on Samuelson’s early methodology as presented in his Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947) by reflecting on the similarity between his mathematical economics and Edwin B. Wilson’s mathematics. Wilson was Samuelson’s professor of advanced mathematical and statistical economics; he was also a protégé of Josiah Willard Gibbs. Wilson defined mathematics as a language that consisted of three interconnected aspects: postulational, axiomatic, and operational. In his Foundations, in a Wilsonian style, Samuelson wrote in the opening page, ‘Mathematics is a Language’ and claimed that he offered operationally meaningful theorems. In this paper, it is argued that these maxims embodied Wilson’s approach, which framed Samuelson’s mathematical and statistical thinking around 1940 and which led him to present his work as being mathematically, theoretically, and empirically well founded. Wilson’s and Percy Bridgman’s operational methodologies are also compared and Wilson is presented as a mediator between Bridgman and Samuelson.     

Vicarelli’s Keynes (and today’s international disorder)

The article speculates about the legacy of Fausto Vicarelli’s interpretation of John Maynard Keynes’s work in the times of a major global crisis. In particular, it puts an emphasis on those aspects of Keynes’s “method” that Vicarelli rightly considered as revolutionary in his Keynes, of 1977, as well as in other writings. The article then turns to Vicarelli’s reconstruction of Keynes’s early work in international economics (Indian Currency and Finance, Economic Consequences of the Peace) and reflects upon the continuing relevance of the philosophy inspiring Keynes’s plans of global reform in the Forties, also in the light of Vicarelli’s (Keynes-inspired) vision of the problem of policy space at the international level.     

SOARING MINDS: THE FLIGHT OF ISRAEL'S ECONOMISTS

The brain drain issue used to revolve primarily around migration from developing to developed countries. In recent years, there is an accumulation of evidence that this is an issue that should interest developed countries as well. Recently published numbers by the European Commission and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development indicate a nonnegligible flow of European academics to American universities. This article provides the first case study conducted on the most massive out-migration of academics on record. At a time when Europe and other developed countries have begun to express concern about the phenomenon, the rate of academic emigration from Israel to the United States is already four to six times the European emigration rate. The particular focus here is on the area of economics, in which the exodus of younger academics from Israel coupled with a heightened retirement rate among the older academics has brought Israel's top economics departments—among the best in the world, until now—to the brink. Countries wanting to create conditions for fostering and nurturing the necessary productivity advances underlying economic growth must become aware of how far and how quickly an academic implosion can occur, if left unchecked. The findings brought forth here should help increase the level of this awareness. ( JEL A11, F22, H52, H83, I23, J31, J61, O15)     

河北企业在欧盟反倾销下的生存之道

欧盟/欧共体是最早对河北出口产品进行反倾销调查并采取反倾销措施的地区,应用欧盟反倾销程序的设计可使河北企业在不同阶段应诉欧盟的反倾销,可使企业在遇到涉外纠纷特别是数量最多的涉外贸易纠纷时能得到及时合理的解决,从而最大限度地保护其合法利益。     

Do economics journal archives promote replicable research?

Abstract. All the long‐standing archives at economics journals do not facilitate the reproduction of published results. The data‐only archives at Journal of Business and Economic Statistics and Economic Journal fail in part because most authors do not contribute data. Results published in the FRB St. Louis Review can rarely be reproduced using the data+code in the journal archive. Recently created archives at top journals should avoid the mistakes of their predecessors. We categorize reasons for archives' failures and identify successful policies.     

The Committee on Economic Education: Its Effect on the Introductory Course and Women in Economics

The percentage of women economics majors has stagnated for decades. This is creating a bottleneck in the pipeline of female economists. The Committee on Economic Education (CEE) of the American Economic Association (AEA) is charged with fostering economic understanding and effective teaching. An examination of its structure, membership and activities over the past 35 years, however, suggests that it has narrowed the scope of economic ideas presented in introductory economics and has not convinced instructors of the benefits of a more active learning environment. The task of engaging students in the search for greater knowledge has largely been left to heterodox “visionaries,” members of the profession who have tried to find ways to make economics courses more interesting and inviting to all students, and especially to under-represented groups. We conclude that the CEE’s membership and structure contribute to the small percentage of the increasingly female undergraduate population who major in economics.     

The Black Worker,Economic Justice and the Speeches of Sadie T.M. Alexander

This paper examines Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander's challenge to racial oppression within the US. In 1921, Alexander became the first African American woman to earn a PhD in economics. The author links Alexander's arguments for black political rights to the provision of economic justice for working class Americans.