Interpellative Sociology of Pharmaceuticals: Problems and Challenges for Innovation and Regulation in the 21st Century

This paper develops a framework with which to interrogate how well pharmaceutical innovation and regulation are performing to produce drugs that improve health. That framework comprises five key dimensions: therapeutic advance of drug product innovations; safety standards in drug testing; use of surrogate measures of clinical benefit; independence of regulatory agencies; and public access to regulatory science. It is concluded that: more demanding regulatory intervention is required in order to increase the proportion of drug innovation that actually offers therapeutic benefits over existing products; drug regulatory agencies need much greater independence from the pharmaceutical industry; the erosion of safety standards since 1990 needs to be reversed; accelerated approvals of drugs based on surrogate, rather than clinical endpoints, require much greater critical attention; and much more extensive public access to regulatory science is required in order for regulatory decision-making to be thoroughly accountable to the public and the wider scientific community.     

Core equivalence for residential land use models

I demonstrate that in the monocentric city model, an allocation is in the core if and only if it is an equilibrium allocation, as long as households are endowed with strictly positive quantities of a composite consumption good, enjoy any net trade bundle at least as much as they enjoy one on the boundary of their choice set, have monotonic preferences, have preferences and endowments that are not too different, and as long as there is land at every location. I also show that equilibria exist in these circumstances, so the core is not empty.     

Insurance groups,product diversification,and the role of surplus lines affiliation

The market share of surplus lines insurers has grown considerably. We examine the impact of surplus lines representation within insurer groups on the extent of product diversification. Initial evidence suggests that groups with greater surplus lines representation are more diversified than other groups. These results hold when controlling for the joint impact of surplus lines representation and size, as well as surplus lines representation and the percentage of overall business written in personal lines. However, when examining the subsample of groups affiliated with surplus lines insurers, we find some evidence that supports the product focus hypothesis, which states surplus lines insurers are used to further focus on existing product lines already being written by other members of the group.     

An economic assessment of options for operating within plantation forestry water entitlements and tightening cap and trade policy

The Green Triangle (GT) region of southern Australia is one of only two jurisdictions globally to licence plantation forestry's groundwater use. In response to declines in groundwater resources caused by historical plantation expansion, reductions in forest water allocations (~50%) are likely for some parts of the region, presenting novel challenges for forest managers in maintaining revenues and timber flows. This article presents a mathematical programming model evaluation of water trade opportunities for plantation forest owners to adapt to reduced water entitlements and explores how tightening groundwater policy could affect forestry returns and land use mix for the region. Results suggest that even absent opportunity to sell water, relatively limited 11% reduction in return could be expected for a large (−50%) water entitlement and (−48%) land-use change out of forestry. Results suggest that opportunities for forestry companies to sell water entitlements may allow them to maintain or even increase combined returns from forestry and water sales. Whilst the results highlight the adaptive capacity of the plantation forestry sector to operate within reduced water entitlement, a significant sectoral and regional economy adjustment would be likely. The discussion focusses on the potential to realise optimisation model-identified adaptation opportunities accounting for real-world thin markets, transaction costs and market friction.