Accessibility and quality of drug company disclosures of payments to healthcare professionals and organisations in 37 countries: a European policy review

ObjectivesTo examine the accessibility and quality of drug company payment data in Europe.DesignComparative policy review of payment data in countries with different regulatory approaches to disclosure.Setting37 European countries.ParticipantsEuropean Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, its trade group and their drug company members; eurosfordocs.eu, an independent database integrating payments disclosed by companies and trade groups; regulatory bodies overseeing payment disclosure.Main outcome measuresRegulatory approaches to disclosure (self-regulation, public regulation, combination of the two); data accessibility (format, structure, searchability, customisable summary statistics, downloadability) and quality (spectrum of disclosed characteristics, payment aggregation, inclusion of taxes, recipient or donor identifiers).ResultsOf 30 countries with self-regulation, five had centralised databases, with Disclosure UK displaying the highest accessibility and quality. In 23 of the remaining countries with self-regulation and available data, disclosures were published in the portable document format (PDF) on individual company websites, preventing the public from understanding payment patterns. Eurosfordocs.eu had greater accessibility than any industry-run database, but the match between the value of payments integrated in eurosfordocs.eu and summarised separately by industry in seven countries ranged between 56% and 100% depending on country. Eurosfordocs.eu shared quality shortcomings with the underlying industry data, including ambiguities in identifying payments and their recipients. Public regulation was found in 15 countries, used either alone (3), in combination (4) or in parallel with (8) self-regulation. Of these countries, 13 established centralised databases with widely ranging accessibility and quality, and sharing some shortcomings with the industry-run databases. The French database, Transparence Santé, had the highest accessibility and quality, exceeding that of Disclosure UK.ConclusionsThe accessibility and quality of payment data disclosed in European countries are typically low, hindering investigation of financial conflicts of interest. Some improvements are straightforward but reaching the standards characterising the widely researched US Open Payments database requires major regulatory change.

Russian Legal Discourse

Due to the nonrecognition of the origin of the business law in the commercial law, or, the law merchant, grown out of the customs and usages of merchants that existed before the emergence of law itself, and which, even in the process of formalizing the law into the legislation, characteristic for the continental law, in respect of commercial activities that introduced its public regulation, has reserved its self-regulatory and dispositive nature, the Russian legal discourse is quite different to what is generally represented as the Western legal discourse. Although Russian business law has been developed under the influence of Western law, the idea of the legislatively established legal surveillance of business activities, where written law is regarded as a progressive means of regulation, plays still an important role, and the breach of the law requirements is a sine qua non condition for civil liability (for damages) in Russia. Keywords: Law, Legal Discourse; Legislation; Praxis, Regulation

Voting Trusts and Antitrust: Rethinking the Role of Shareholder Litigation in Public Regulation, from the 1880s to the 1930s

Scholars have long recognized that the states’ authority to charter corporations bolstered their antitrust powers in ways that were not available to the federal government. Our paper contributes to this literature by focusing attention on the relevance for competition policy of lawsuits brought by minority shareholders against their own companies, especially lawsuits challenging voting trusts. Historically judges had been reluctant to intervene in corporations’ internal affairs and had been wary of the potential for opportunism in shareholders’ derivative suits. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, they had begun to revise their views and see shareholders as useful allies in the struggle against monopoly. Although the balance between judges’ suspicion of and support for shareholders’ activism shifted back and forth over time, in the end the lawsuits provoked state legislatures to strengthen antitrust policy by making devices like voting trusts unsuitable for purposes of economic concentration.

Fatal Accidents in Outdoor Recreation and Nature-Based Tourism in Norway: A Discourse Analysis

The purpose of this research is to investigate how the Norwegian outdoor-safety discourse develop between 2005 – 2015. Second, I examine the creation of meaning and understanding about risk and safety in the outdoors. The research affirms that important elements of opinion formation are discursively negotiated. The main line in the negotiations revolves around how to relate to ‘the mountain common sense line’, based on the code of conduct of ‘touring at your own risk’. The legal discourse, the energy industry safety discourse and the professional struggle draw towards less individual responsibility for own safety, and more towards institutional responsibility for people’s safety, more public regulation and more physical facilitations to reduce risk. On the other hand, lax regulatory legislation, the administrative apparatus, ‘the layman tradition’ and the friluftsliv discourse draws on individual responsibility for one’s own safety, limited institutional responsibility and public regulation, and moderate physical facilitations aimed at keeping people safe.

The Mental Element of The Crime of Fault in The Performance of The Official Jobs: Article (341) of The Iraqi Law

Faulty execution of official duties is regarded as one of the main offences that endangers elected authorities, a well-ordered public regulation, and utility that causes harm to public property and public interests. Since it is done by an individual who is performing an official work, this offence is committed by one of the workers violating the boundaries of their employment. This is enshrined in Iraqi penalty Law No. 111 of 1969 in article 341 and is deemed one of the financial and administrative corruption offences stipulated in the honesty Commission Act No. 30 of 2011 due to its extreme and significant danger and leaving traces and impacts. The consequences of this major crime and its effect on the state and community is expressed in the legal, democratic, administrative, fiscal, and social structures of the state. It is described as accidental offenses committed without criminal purpose. In this form of crime, neither initiating nor participating is possible, but both of the perpetrators are simple owners. In certain ways, this offence is analogous to the crime of willful injury to public property and interests, in addition to all other general criteria for any crime.

The Public Regulation of Cryptocurrency Relationships Within the Framework of the National Security Risk

Rapid digital economy development brings about not only new opportunities, but new risks as well. Absence of any virtual borders, simplicity of transactions between investors from different countries created by digital technologies and the difficulty in the identification of persons entering into such transactions create a national security threat causing the need for the public regulation of the digital environment. This conclusion is especially relevant in respect of cryptocurrency relationships presenting an international alternative to national payment relationships.