David R. Henderson

Did Inequality Increase in Transition?: An Analysis of the Transition Countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia

In the first decade that the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia transitioned toward freer markets, measured income inequality increased. Because this contradicted previous models of inequality, researchers linked the increase in inequality to a supposed equality under socialism and to the process of economic and political liberalization. We show, however, that other factors, including hidden inequalities in the socialist era, can explain democratizations resultant increase in measured income inequality.

Fair Trade is Counterproductive and Unfair: Rejoinder

This is a rejoinder to a criticism of Henderson (2008) by Alastair Smith. Our conclusion is that Hendersons basic case, although nicked around the edges by developments since the original was written, still stands. Moreover, we point out that Smiths criticism of Hendersons point that Fair Trade could help kill the banana actually supports Hendersons case. Finally, Smiths proposed ‘trade, not aid’ solution does not contradict Henderson (2008). Refusing to buy Fair Trade coffee and other products and, instead, buying quality coffee and other products would not reduce trade, as Smith seems to imply.

Key factors for successful data integration in biomarker research

Integrating a wide range of biomedical data such as that rapidly emerging from the use of next-generation sequencing is expected to have a key role in identifying and qualifying new biomarkers to support precision medicine. Here, we highlight some of the challenges for biomedical data integration and approaches to address them.

How (some) socialists become capitalists: The cases of three prominent intellectuals

Abstract Three prominent economists born early in the twentieth century—James Buchanan, Jack Hirshleifer, and Simon Rottenberg—switched from a belief in socialism in their twenties or thirties to strong support for free markets. Interviews show that for all three, and especially for Buchanan and Rottenberg, what changed them is what they learned in their economics classes. For Hirshleifer, another major influence was the pact between Hitler and Stalin, which caused him to be more skeptical about leftist ideas and made him more open to intellectual criticisms of socialism.

Canada's Budget Triumph

In the mid‐1990s Canadas federal government, concerned about a debt‐to‐GDP ratio that was approaching 70%, began a decade‐long policy of cutting government spending. It also increased taxes, but by only one dollar for about every six dollars of spending cuts. The Canadian government cut subsidies to individuals, corporations, and provincial governments while tightening eligibility for unemployment insurance. The government also sold off its holdings of various state‐owned enterprises. One major success was its shifting of air traffic control to NAV Canada, a private, non‐profit user cooperative. This step netted the government

The Economics of War and Foreign Policy: What's Missing?

1.4 billion at the outset, saved about

Abstract 5036: Correlation of preclinical antitumor activity of regorafenib in CRC-PDX xenografts with gene expression and clinical parameters of the primary tumor

200 million a year in subsidies, and resulted in a technological revolution in air traffic control that has put Canada years ahead of the United States. From 1997 to 2008, Canadas government had an unbroken string of annual budget surpluses; and by 2009, Canadas debt‐to‐GDP ratio had fallen below 30%. Starting in 2000, the government used some of what otherwise would have been surplus to cut taxes on individuals and corporations. The corporate tax rate was cut in stages from 28% in 2000 to 21% by 2004.

Health Insurance and Moral Hazard: A Misdiagnosis

In the past 50 years, there have been three main applications of economics in the study of war and foreign policy. The first involves the so-called “broken-window” fallacy. The claim is that waging war (or breaking windows) is good for economies because it reduces unemployment and increases real output. The second application involves cost analysis. It is applied on a large scale such as evaluating the costs of a particular war, or on a small scale, such as the least-cost way to destroy a military target. The third major application of economics involves the use of game theory to develop foreign policy strategy, where governments are regarded as “rational” players. What has been missing, with few exceptions, has been the same kind of economic analysis in the study of war and foreign policy that we see, for example, in the studies of tariffs in international economics, of antitrust in industrial organization, and of foreign aid in economic development, to name just three. In all these areas, economists analyse government economic policies to understand the effects of these policies, often including unintended consequences. Economists point out the “information problem” that arises when government officials have so little knowledge of the economy (tariffs), industry (antitrust), or country (foreign aid) that they want to affect. This lack of knowledge can cause results that differ from, and sometimes are the opposite of, the results that the decision-makers claim to be pursuing. In analysing the policies, economists usually apply microeconomic models, but to understand the reasons policies are adopted, they often appeal to public-choice analysis. They do not assume, for example, that the interests of politicians who impose tariffs are the same as the interests of the consumers who pay higher prices because of tariffs. Instead, “public choice analysis” involves developing an Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 87–100, March 2007

Public Choice and Two of Its Founders: An Appreciation

Regorafenib is a small molecule inhibitor of multiple transmembrane and intracellular kinases involved in normal cellular functions and in pathologic processes such as oncogenesis, tumor angiogenesis, metastasis, and tumor immunity. Regorafenib is approved for the treatment of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) who have been previously treated with fluoropyrimidine-, oxaliplatin- and irinotecan-based chemotherapy, an anti-VEGF therapy, and, if RAS wild-type, an anti-EGFR therapy or with locally advanced, unresectable or metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) who have been previously treated with imatinib mesylate and sunitinib malate. Recently an overall survival benefit has been shown in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who had previously been treated with sorafenib (RESORCE). OncoTrack is an Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) sponsored project with the goal to improve the basis for identification of biomarkers based on the mechanisms of action of therapies approved for this indication. For this purpose, a panel of CRC-PDX xenografts was generated by the OncoTrack project. At the time of the analysis reported here fifty xenografts had been treated with regorafenib at a dose of 10 mg/kg/d or with vehicle for 24 days. The analysis of tumor growth rates (TGR) showed pronounced differences between different tumors and between vehicle and regorafenib treated models. The relative antitumor activity (relative TGR) of regorafenib varied between -0,13 (good response) and 0.0 (no response). Investigations of relative TGR in relationship to (non-) clinical parameters of the primary tumor such as age, gender, sidedness and tumor histology identified a marginally significant (p= 0.04) better response in tumors from younger patients. No other correlations were detected to this end, which may be due to the small sample number. To correlate antitumor activity of regorafenib with gene expression, RNA was isolated from sections of selected vehicle and regorafenib treated xenografts and hybrized on Affymetrix HuGene-2.1_st human transcriptome arrays. Expression profiles were subsequently analyzed using the Random Forests algorithm to identify gene expression signatures predicting response to regorafenib. The best signatures did not perform better than signatures derived after randomizing responses, i.e. no predictive signature could be identified. Further studies with larger samples sizes are necessary to improve the outcome of such an approach; however one should acknowledge that to date no predictive gene signatures could be identified for multikinase inhibitors, which may be intrinsic to their complex mechanism of action. The research reported here received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement 115234 (OncoTrack). Citation Format: Henrik Seidel, Jens Hoffmann, Ralf Lesche, Sylvia Grunewald, David Henderson, Dieter Zopf. Correlation of preclinical antitumor activity of regorafenib in CRC-PDX xenografts with gene expression and clinical parameters of the primary tumor [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 5036. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-5036

Using quit rates to estimate compensating wage differentials in the military

A common misunderstanding of moral hazard emerges from an inaccurate definition of health-care insurance. What we call health insurance is actually a bundle of two services — insurance for catastrophic care and subsidies for routine care. The insurance portion covers insurable medical events and the subsidized portion provides additional compensation to employees and taxpayer-funded coverage for the poor and elderly. This bundling approach has made it difficult to draw a bright line between what is medical insurance and what is merely a tax-free subsidy of the cost of routine care. As a result, many economists have chosen to include the over-consumption of routine care in the moral hazard bundle instead of attributing the behavior to the subsidy. This approach leads to confusing discussions of public policy.