Identifying Industry Margins with Price Constraints: Structural Estimation on Pharmaceuticals

We develop a structural model to investigate the effects of pharmaceutical price regulation on demand and on manufacturers’ price-setting behavior in France. We estimate price-cost margins in a regulated market with price constraints and infer whether these constraints are binding, exploiting cost restrictions across drugs, which come from observing the same drugs in potentially price-constrained markets (France) and in markets where prices are unregulated (United States and Germany). Our counterfactual simulations suggest that price constraints generated modest savings for anti-ulcer drugs in 2003–2013 (2 percent of total expenses), relative to a free pricing scenario, and shifted consumption from generic to branded drugs. (JEL C51, D24, I18, L13, L51, L65)

The Frugal Innovation Case of Solar-powered Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) of Vortex Engineering in India

Constraint-based innovations are innovations that are conceived under conditions of scarcity for resource-constrained markets, often referred to as Bottom of pyramid (BoP) marketplace. One such type of constraint-based innovation, frugal innovation (also the focus of this study) has played an important role in providing affordable and accessible products and services to the customers at BoP. This study examines one of the successful frugal innovations from the Indian financial sector called Vortex solar based transaction systems (commonly known as rural ATMs) and offers a comprehensive analysis on the incorporated bottom-up product development process and innovation drivers. Study highlights the nine specific innovative design features of these machines that were mainly designed based on core customer requirements and unique challenges. Analysis reveals the importance of cost effective, easy to operate and sustainable solutions for customers at BoP and also showcase how frugal innovations are also facilitating solutions to address larger societal problems.

GOOD DEAL BOUNDS WITH CONVEX CONSTRAINTS

We investigate the structure of good deal bounds, which are subintervals of a no-arbitrage pricing bound, for financial market models with convex constraints as an extension of Arai & Fukasawa (2014). The upper and lower bounds of a good deal bound are naturally described by a convex risk measure. We call such a risk measure a good deal valuation; and study its properties. We also discuss superhedging cost and Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing for convex constrained markets.