Budget impact analysis of secukinumab versus adalimumab in the treatment of ankylosing spondylitis

Background: Biologic treatments have enhanced the treatment outcomes of patients with active ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Until recently, TNF-alpha-inhibitors have been the only biologics approved for the treatment of active AS. The objective of this study was to assess the potential financial impact of the first non-TNF-alpha biologic secukinumab (fully human IL-17A-inhibitor) vs adalimumab (TNF-alpha-inhibitor) in the treatment of AS in Finland.

Materials and methods: In this model-based budget impact analysis, patients were treated either with secukinumab (150?mg) or adalimumab (40?mg). The number of patients and market share of different biologics were based on national reimbursement registry data. Adalimumab was the most commonly used biologic treatment for AS, and in the base case analysis all adalimumab patients are assumed to switch to secukinumab. Response rates were based on a matching-adjusted indirect comparison between secukinumab and adalimumab. Patients not achieving response were switched to another biologic treatment.

Results: Treating AS patients with secukinumab instead of adalimumab leads to potential savings of 18.2 million euros within a 5-year time period. The total costs within the follow-up time were 59.5 million euros and 77.7 million euros with and without secukinumab, respectively. According to sensitivity analyses, a higher adoption rate of secukinumab corresponds to higher potential savings.

Conclusions: Secukinumab is a cost-saving treatment option compared with adalimumab in the treatment of AS in Finland. More patients could be treated with a biologic by allocating resources more efficiently.     

Innovation speed under uncertainty and competition

Innovation speed is widely considered to be a key factor for a firm's ability to maintain competitive advantage. Primarily, empirical evidence has found contradictory interdependencies regarding the role of innovation speed. The prevailing proposition of “the faster the better” has been challenged by results of empirical studies heavily depending on the methodological setup used. In contrast, we propose a model of the complete innovation process to study innovation speed under uncertainty and competition. We find that higher market uncertainty speeds up innovation and encourages firms to innovate incrementally. Strong competition tends to reduce innovation speed and encourages rather radical innovation.     

Virtual operators in the mobile industry: a techno-economic analysis

For a company planning to become a mobile operator, two alternative ways to enter the market exist. In addition to the traditional way of acquiring a spectrum license and building a mobile network, market entrance is also possible by becoming a virtual operator and utilizing the existing networks of incumbent operators. Potentially, virtual operators will have an important role in shaping the mobile market structure and competition. In this paper, techno-economic modeling methods are used to analyze the position of virtual operators in the mobile communications industry. Four alternative virtual operator scenarios are constructed and analyzed using a linear, deterministic, and quantitative techno-economic model. The results highlight the importance of wholesale contracts with incumbent mobile network operators in determining the virtual operators’ business profitability. Unbalance in termination prices between fixed and mobile networks is shown to give incentives for virtual operators to invest in their own network infrastructure.     

How Media Coverage of Corporate Social Irresponsibility Increases Financial Risk

Research summary: This article explores the relationship between corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) and financial risk. We posit that media coverage of CSI generates risk by providing conditions that increase the potential for stakeholder sanctions. Through analyzing an international panel of 539 firms during 2008–2013, we find that firms receiving higher CSI coverage face higher financial risk. We show that the reach of the reporting media outlet is a critical condition for this relationship. Once the outlet has a high reach, the severity of CSI coverage is a boundary condition that further reinforces the effect. Our findings complement existing theory about the risk‐mitigating effect of corporate social responsibility by illuminating the risk‐generating effect of CSI coverage. For executives, these insights suggest complementary strategies for corporate risk management. Managerial summary: This article examines the effect of negative news on financial risk. It shows that negative media articles regarding environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues increase a firm's credit risk. It also provides a detailed analysis of the impact of an article's reach and severity, i.e., how many readers are exposed to the article and how harshly it criticizes the firm. The results allow to quantitatively assess the risk that emanates from negative ESG news. For executives, three strategies are derived for limiting a firm's exposure to this risk: balancing corporate social responsibility programs with operational safety programs, reporting suboptimal environmental and social performance transparently and proactively, and avoiding acquisition targets and markets with a legacy of negative news. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Willingness to Pay for Voluntary Climate Action and Its Determinants: Field-Experimental Evidence

The determinants of individual, voluntary climate action (VCA) in combating climate change and its potential scale are frequently debated in public but largely underresearched. We provide estimates of the willingness to individually reduce EU greenhouse gas emissions by one ton, using the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme. Estimates are derived from an online field experiment with a large, highly heterogenous, and Internet-representative sample of voting-aged Germans. Jointly estimating willingness to pay (WTP), non-indifference to VCA, and prior knowledge, we uncover important determinants of preferences for VCA, such as education, the information structure among the population, and exogenous environmental conditions.     

EXCHANGE RATE FUNDAMENTALS,FORECASTING, AND SPECULATION: BAYESIAN MODELS IN BLACK MARKETS

Although speculative activity is central to black markets for currency, the out‐of‐sample performance of structural models in those settings is unknown. We substantially update the literature on empirical determinants of black market rates and evaluate the out‐of‐sample performance of linear models and non‐parametric Bayesian treed Gaussian process (BTGP) models against the random walk benchmark. Fundamentals‐based models outperform the benchmark in out‐of‐sample prediction accuracy and trading rule profitability measures given future values of fundamentals. In simulated real‐time trading exercises, however, the BTGP achieves superior realized profitability, accuracy and market timing, while linear models do no better than a random walk. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The influence of trust perceptions on German tourists’ intention to book a sustainable hotel: a new approach to analysing marketing information

ABSTRACT

This study examined the relationship between German tourists’ trust perceptions and their intention to book a sustainable hotel, pioneering a new quantitative approach to sustainable tourism marketing. Data came from 300 respondents who participated in an online survey. Respondents were given a digital brochure to read containing information about a “fictitious” three-star beach hotel in Portugal, before completing a questionnaire that measured inter alia their intention to book this sustainable hotel. Both individual “general trust” (perception of others’ trustworthiness) and “specific trust” towards the fictitious hotel in the brochure were measured. The survey also evaluated respondents’ perceptions about the usefulness of the information in the brochure. Multiple regression analysis of the data indicated that general trust, trusting the hotel and perceived usefulness of the brochure were positively and significantly related to booking intentions. An interaction between general trust and perceived usefulness was also observed. This means that the higher the perception rate about the brochure's usefulness, the higher general trust was for booking intentions and vice versa. The practical implications of the results suggest that tourists could be motivated to book a hotel if its sustainability attributes and amenities were communicated in a trust inspiring way in marketing material.     

Does truth win when teams reason strategically?

We study behavior in the race game with the aim of assessing whether teams can create synergies. The race game has the advantage that the optimal strategy depends neither on beliefs about other players nor on distributional or efficiency concerns. Our results reveal that teams not only outperform individuals but that they can also beat the “truth-wins” benchmark. In particular, varying the length of the race game we find that the team advantage increases with the complexity of the game.     

Supply Disruptions and Regional Price Effects in a Spatial Oligopoly—An Application to the Global Gas Market

Supply shocks in the global gas market may affect countries differently, as the market is regionally interlinked but not perfectly integrated. Additionally, high supply‐side concentration may expose countries to market power in different ways. To evaluate the strategic position of importing countries with regard to gas supplies, we disentangle the import price into different components and characterize each component as price increasing or price decreasing. Because of the complexity of the interrelations in the global gas market, we use an equilibrium model programmed as a mixed complementarity problem (MCP) and simulate the blockage of liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows through the Strait of Hormuz. This enables us to account for the oligopolistic nature and the asymmetry of the gas supply. We find that Japan faces the most severe price increases, as the Japanese gas demand completely relies on LNG supply. In contrast, European countries such as the UK benefit from good interconnection to the continental pipeline system and domestic price taking production, both of which help to mitigate an increase in physical costs of supply as well as in the exercise of market power.     

One-stage estimation of the effects of operational conditions and practices on productive performance: asymptotically normal and efficient,root-<Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis> consistent StoNEZD method

Understanding the effects of operational conditions and practices on productive efficiency can provide valuable economic and managerial insights. The conventional approach is to use a two-stage method where the efficiency estimates are regressed on contextual variables representing the operational conditions. The main problem of the two-stage approach is that it ignores the correlations between inputs and contextual variables. To address this shortcoming, we build on the recently developed regression interpretation of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to develop a new one-stage semi-nonparametric estimator that combines the nonparametric DEA-style frontier with a regression model of the contextual variables. The new method is referred to as stochastic semi-nonparametric envelopment of z variables data (StoNEZD). The StoNEZD estimator for the contextual variables is shown to be statistically consistent under less restrictive assumptions than those required by the two-stage DEA estimator. Further, the StoNEZD estimator is shown to be unbiased, asymptotically efficient, asymptotically normally distributed, and converge at the standard parametric rate of order n ^−1/2. Therefore, the conventional methods of statistical testing and confidence intervals apply for asymptotic inference. Finite sample performance of the proposed estimators is examined through Monte Carlo simulations.