Life sciences companies falling behind?

That is what an analysis from PwC finds, at least with respect to stock market returns. Our PwC equal-weight index of 50 pharma companies analyzes the sector’s total shareholder returns performance relative to the S&P 500 Equal Weighted Index. From 2018 through November 2024, the PwC pharma index returned 7.6% to shareholders, compared with more…

When should we privatize government industries?

Tyler Cowen is an economist from George Washington University and a libertarian. Thus, you would expect his answer to this question would be ‘always’. In a recent Bloomberg article discussing whether to privatize government assets (e.g., USPS), he makes a more nuanced argument. First, for consumer goods, it is nearly always good to privatize. Cowen…

Merchants of Death

That is the clever title of recent American Economic Review publication by Cyrus Aghamolla, Pinar Karaca-Mandic, Xuelin Li, Richard T. Thakor. The abstract is below. This study examines the link between credit supply and hospital health outcomes. We use bank stress tests as exogenous shocks to credit access for hospitals that have lending relationships with…

Impact of AI on the economy

From Bonney et al. (2024): Using a new large-scale business survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, we find that AI use is having a much greater impact on worker tasks than on employment levels at the firm level. About 27% of firms using AI report replacing worker tasks, but only about 5% experience employment change…

ISPOR’s 2024 HEOR Awards

Who won the ISPOR’s 2024 HEOR awards? The list is below. Avedis Donabedian Lifetime Achievement Award: C. Daniel Mullins, PhD; Professor of Practice, Sciences, and Health Outcomes Research and Executive Director of The PATIENTS Program; University of Maryland School of Pharmacy; Baltimore, MD, USA Marilyn Dix Smith Leadership Award: Deborah Marshall, PhD; Professor and Svare…

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson win 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics

The Nobel Prize committee summarizes their contributions as follows: Some countries become trapped in a situation with extractive institutions and low economic growth. The introduction of inclusive institutions would create long-term benefits for everyone, but extractive institutions provide short-term gains for the people in power. As long as the political system guarantees they will remain…

Who was Harold Hotelling?

Who was Harold Hotelling and what did he contribute to the field of economics? A paper by Gaspard et al. (2024) in the Journal of Economics Literature provides some background on his life, his research and pros and cons of his research contributions. Today I summarize some of his key contributions to the field of…

How would the inclusion of specialty drugs impact CPI-Rx?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS’) Prescription Drug Consumer Price Index (CPI‐Rx) looks at price changes for drugs dispensed at outpatient retail pharmacies. However, many pharmaceuticals–especially infusions and injections–are administered at physician offices or hospitals. How would including physician-administered drugs impact the CPI-Rx? That is the question a paper by Hicks, Berndt and Frank (2024)…