The analysis of barriers to entry into the pharmaceutical market of Ukraine

The pharmaceutical market of Ukraine is characterized by a tendency to dominate imports over exports, which indicates its economic attractiveness for foreign companies that face various obstacles when entering the market. Entry barriers are understood as factors of an objective or subjective nature that prevent new firms from organizing profitable operations in the industry. The presence and impact of market barriers prove the need for their identification and comprehensive research. It has been established that when entering the pharmaceutical market of Ukraine, there are restrictive barriers related to state policy (for example, licensing, registration of medicines, examination, certification, etc.), barriers due to competition, and barriers of a non-legal nature. The results of the analysis of the competitive situation as a possible barrier characterize the pharmaceutical market of Ukraine as a market of free competition, which contributes to the relatively free entry of foreign manufacturers. Market entry barriers are also caused by anti-competitive behavior such as mergers and acquisitions, unfair competition, informal agreements, and so on. The results of the research can be used in making decisions about entering new markets or market segments for pharmaceutical companies, in forming competitive advantages and business strategies in order to develop potential in the long term.

Other Innovation Policies and Alternative Modelling Approaches

This chapter discusses the macroeconomic impact evaluation of other policies related to innovation. In particular, two examples are shown on the impact simulation of a reduction to firms’ entry barriers and an increase in R&D tax credits. Alternative ways of modelling these two types of policy shocks are also provided to illustrate how different modelling platforms featuring different economic mechanisms can complement each other and enrich the landscape of macroeconomic policy impact assessments.

Judgment Aggregation in Creative Production: Evidence from the Movie Industry

We study a novel, low-cost approach to aggregating judgment from a large number of industry experts on ideas that they encounter in their normal course of business. Our context is the movie industry, in which customer appeal is difficult to predict and investment costs are high. The Black List, an annual publication, ranks unproduced scripts based on anonymous nominations from film executives. This approach entails an inherent trade-off: Low participation costs enable high response rates, but nominations lack standard criteria, and which voters see which ideas is unobservable and influenced by various factors. Despite these challenges, we find that such aggregation is predictive: Listed scripts are substantially more likely to be released than observably similar, but unlisted, scripts, and, conditional on release and investment levels, listed scripts generate higher box-office revenues. We also find that this method mitigates entry barriers for less-experienced writers, as (i) their scripts are more likely to be listed than those by experienced writers and to rank higher if listed and (ii) within scripts by less-experienced writers, being listed is associated with a higher release rate. Yet, the gap in release probabilities relative to experienced writers remains large, even for top-ranked scripts. These results can be explained by the premise that scripts from less-experienced writers are more visible among eligible voters than scripts from experienced writers. This highlights idea visibility as an important determinant of votes and surfaces the trade-offs, as well as potential limitations, associated with such methods. This paper was accepted by Ashish Arora, entrepreneurship and innovation.

The Legitimacy of Sustainability Standards: A Paradox Perspective

Sustainability standards have proliferated widely in recent years but their legitimacy remains contested. This paper suggests that sustainability standards need to cope with an important but unexplored paradox to gain legitimacy. While standard setters create low entry barriers and requirements for adopters so that standards can diffuse quickly and achieve a status of cognitive legitimacy, standards also need to ensure that adopters create high levels of impact, thereby acquiring moral legitimacy. While the need for diffusion and impact occurs at the same time, they cannot be achieved simultaneously. We unpack this paradox and show that its salience for standard setters differs depending on (a) the growth trajectory of a standard and (b) the perceived intensity of the demands for diffusion and impact. We outline five response strategies that standard setters can use to tackle the diffusion–impact paradox and illustrate our theoretical considerations through a detailed case study of the UN Global Compact. Our paper advances scholarly understandings on how sustainability standards gain legitimacy and sheds light on the complex and inherently paradoxical nature of legitimacy. We derive implications for the literatures on sustainability standards, legitimacy, and paradox management.

Cryptocurrency Competition and Market Concentration in the Presence of Network Effects

When network products and services become more valuable as their userbase grows (network effects), this tendency can become a major determinant of how they compete with each other in the market and how the market is structured. Network effects are traditionally linked to high market concentration, early-mover advantages, and entry barriers, and in the market they have also been used as a valuation tool. The recent resurgence of Bitcoin has been partly attributed to network effects, too. We study the existence of network effects in six cryptocurrencies from their inception to obtain a high-level overview of the application of network effects in the cryptocurrency market. We show that, contrary to the usual implications of network effects, they do not serve to concentrate the cryptocurrency market, nor do they accord any one cryptocurrency a definitive competitive advantage, nor are they consistent enough to be reliable valuation tools. Therefore, while network effects do occur in cryptocurrency networks, they are not (yet) a defining feature of the cryptocurrency marketas a whole.

Approaches to Assess Market Power in the Online Networking Market

Facebook, the world’s largest online networking platform, is the subject of multiple antitrust investigations by various state and federal regulators. Yet scholars and practitioners remain divided on how to measure Facebook’s market power. Some argue that conventional approaches for identifying market power are suitable for the online networking market. This Article argues such conventional approaches are inadequate for assessing market power in online networking markets.This Article begins by introducing the traditional approaches that courts have employed to assess market power: the direct effects approach, the Lerner Index approach, and the market share approach. It next describes Facebook’s business model and shows that, because Facebook is a two-sided market, these traditional approaches should not be applied to Facebook.Instead, the Article proposes that the information gaps, switching costs, and entry barriers approaches are better suited for assessing the market power of online networking platforms. The Article thus concludes by proposing a legal framework for assessing market power in online networking platforms which employs such non-traditional approaches. While this Article uses Facebook as the main case study, this paper’s findings are equally applicable to similar online networking platforms.

Noncompetes

Employee covenants not to compete, which bar workers who leave their jobs from working for a competing employer for a period of time, should be subject to heightened antitrust enforcement. While noncompetes may serve legitimate purposes, they also create entry barriers and reduce labor market competition. The threat to competition has been highlighted by new research, which suggests that employers overuse noncompetes and that noncompetes reduce labor market competition. A likely explanation is the inadequacy of the existing legal regime. Antitrust law nominally applies to noncompetes, but courts have eviscerated it by imposing an excessive burden of proof on plaintiffs who challenge noncompetes. An appropriate doctrinal framework for evaluating noncompetes under antitrust law would shift the burden of proof to employers. Employers would be permitted to rebut challenges to their noncompetes only by showing that the noncompetes raise wages for their own workers and workers in the broader labor market.