Patents and R&D expenditure effects on equity returns in pharmaceutical industry

As costs of pharmaceutical R&D soar and productivity falls, the role of research pipelines in firm valuations is changing. To date, surprisingly little work has been published on the effects of R&D pipeline performance on equity returns, while controlling for coincident factors, such as legacy patents and presence of blockbuster drugs in production. Using 1996–2013 data for nine largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, this article assesses the role of the above factors on returns to pharmaceutical companies equity. We show significant positive link between changes in the number of blockbusters on patent six months prior and returns in excess of pharmaceutical equity index. The number of patents granted by United States Patent and Trademark Office in a quarter is also a significant factor. On the other hand, we find that increases in R&D expenditure in large-cap pharmaceutical companies are viewed negatively by investors in the short term.     

Firm export participation: entry,spillovers and tradability

This article analyses the choices made by individual firms to enter the export market. A probit specification tests the probability of exporting in the current period given past exporting experience, controlling for the firm's initial export status. This article uses a two-step estimation procedure suggested by Orme (1997, 2001), which controls for the influence of initial conditions. Significant evidence of sunk costs was found, based on the observed persistence of export activity and the explanatory power of previous exporting experience on current export status. A measure of sector tradability was also used and as expected firms in more easily traded sectors were most likely to be exporters. However, little evidence of spillovers was found in determining export market participation.     

Impacts from climate change on organizations: a conceptual foundation

Physical impacts from climate change already pose major challenges for organizations, and the trend is rising. Organization theorists, however, have barely begun to systematically consider the organizational impacts of more and increasingly intense storms, floods, droughts, fires, sea level rise or changing growing seasons as part of their domain of study. Eight organizationally relevant dimensions of climate impacts are identified: severity, temporal scale, spatial scale, predictability, mode, immediacy, state change potential and accelerating trend potential. Combined, their scale, scope and systemic uncertainty suggest future conditions of systemic hyperturbulence in organizational environments, defined here as ‘massive discontinuous change’ (MDC). To build a conceptual foundation for organizations to respond and adapt to MDC, the paper examines contributions from literatures on the management of sustainability, crisis, risk, resilience and adaptive organizational change. It highlights gaps for addressing both business challenges and opportunities from MDC, and suggests avenues for future research. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Setting price or quantity: Depends on what the seller is more uncertain about

We consider a seller with uncertain demand for its product. If the demand curve were certain, then setting price and setting quantity would be equivalent ways to frame the seller’s problem of choosing a profit-maximizing point on its demand curve. With uncertain demand, these become distinct sales mechanisms. We distinguish between uncertainty about the market size and uncertainty about the consumers’ valuations. Our main results are that (i) for a given marginal cost, an increase in uncertainty about valuations favors setting quantity whereas an increase in uncertainty about market size favors setting price; (ii) keeping demand uncertainty fixed, there is a nonmonotonic relationship between marginal costs and the optimal selling mechanism (setting price or quantity); and (iii) in a bilateral monopoly channel setting, coordination occurs except for a conflict zone in which the retailer’s choice of a selling mechanism deviates from the coordinated channel selling mechanism.     

Individually adapted sequential Bayesian conjoint-choice designs in the presence of consumer heterogeneity

We propose an efficient individually adapted sequential Bayesian approach for constructing conjoint-choice experiments, which uses Bayesian updating, a Bayesian analysis, and a Bayesian design criterion to generate a conjoint-choice design for each individual respondent based on the previous answers of that particular respondent. The proposed design approach is compared with three non-adaptive design approaches, two aggregate-customization approaches (based on the conditional logit model and on a mixed logit model), and the (nearly) orthogonal design approach, under various degrees of response accuracy and consumer heterogeneity. A simulation study shows that the individually adapted sequential Bayesian conjoint-choice designs perform better than the benchmark approaches in all scenarios we investigated in terms of the efficient estimation of individual-level part-worths and the prediction of individual choices. In the presence of high consumer heterogeneity, the improvements are impressive. The new method also performs well when the response accuracy is low, in contrast with the recently proposed adaptive polyhedral approach. Furthermore, the new methodology yields precise population-level parameter estimates, even though the design criterion focuses on the individual-level parameters.     

Unified GIS database on cycle tourism infrastructure

Bicycles are used in the Czech Republic for commuting to work and for leisure time activities. This is reflected in the cycle trail administrators' offer to make the existing network denser, design new routes, mark their courses and install a complementary cycle infrastructure.     

The Informational Role of Manufacturer Returns Policies: How They Can Help in Learning the Demand

Returns policies are usually thought of as being a way to insure retailers against excess inventory. The work of Pellegrini (1986), Chu (1993), Lin (1993) and Padmanabhan and Png (1997) highlights the fact that there is considerably more to returns policies than just a mechanism for insurance. Our work identifies a heretofore undocumented rationale for returns policy: its role in learning the demand for a new product. The model of manufacturer–retailer interaction assumes that the demand is uncertain but correlated across time periods. Thus, its true nature is revealed over time via the realization of sales. The speed of such learning depends on the size of the inventory at the retail level which in turn can be strategically influenced by the manufacturer through a returns policy. In such environments, we show that a returns policy may be a way for the manufacturer to learn the demand of a new product.     

Honorarberatung – Einstellung und Relevanz auf dem Versicherungsmarkt

In the area of insurance intermediaries, fee-based advisory is the widely discussed alternative type of remuneration to the standard commission system. The aim of this study is to comprehensively analyze the attitude of independent insurance brokers to the direct commission system. In total, 23 interviews with experts were conducted to gather insights into the significance and the behaviour of insurance brokers. Thus, differences (level of attitude) between the interviewed experts as well as factors influencing their attitudes can be identified.     

Life Events as Windows of Opportunity for Changing Towards Sustainable Consumption Patterns?

Strategies for motivating households towards sustainable consumption are confronted with the challenge of addressing seldom-reflected-upon routines, which cannot easily be changed. We investigate whether life-course transitions can serve as starting point for sustainable consumption interventions, assuming that during such transitions people already need to adapt their behavioural routines and are thus more receptive to interventions. The effects of two different campaigns (information mailing and personal consultation) were evaluated for people experiencing two different kinds of life events (childbirth and relocation). The experimental study found that the consultation campaign had significant effects on sustainable consumption concerning some of the focussed on behaviours, but did not have greater effects on the life-events groups. Mailing of information did not result in significant behavioural changes. To get a clearer picture about the impact of life-course transitions on everyday routines and susceptibility to interventions, additional qualitative interviews were carried out. The results indicate that everyday routines and consumption patterns change during life-course transitions, but with heterogeneous results regarding sustainability. The interviews revealed that the preparation phase preceding life events and a rather short period after them are decisive for changes in routine. Tentative explanations for the low impact of the consultation campaign on the persons in life-course transition are that the campaign addressed the target groups too late and that its design was not specifically adapted to these target groups.