Frank Mueller-Langer

Neglected infectious diseases: Are push and pull incentive mechanisms suitable for promoting drug development research?

Infectious diseases are among the main causes of death and disability in developing countries, and they are a major reason for the health disparity between rich and poor countries. One of the reasons for this public health tragedy is a lack of lifesaving essential medicines, which either do not exist or badly need improvements. In this article, we analyse which of the push and pull mechanisms proposed in the recent literature may serve to promote research into neglected infectious diseases. A combination of push programmes that subsidise research inputs through direct funding and pull programmes that reward research output rather than research input may be the appropriate strategy to stimulate research into neglected diseases. On the one hand, early-stage (basic) research should be supported through push mechanisms, such as research grants or publicly financed research institutions. On the other hand, pull mechanisms, such as prize funds that link reward payments to the health impacts of effective medicines, have the potential to stimulate research into neglected diseases.

The Hybrid Open Access Citation Advantage: How Many More Cites is a

We study the hybrid open access (HOA) citation effect. Under HOA Pilot agreements, HOA is assigned for all articles of eligible authors. We use unique data on 208 (1,121) HOA (closed access) economics articles. We control for the quality of journals, articles and institutions and citations to RePec pre-prints. Performing Poisson quasi-maximum likelihood regressions, HOA turns out to be a significant predictor of citations with marginal effects ranging between 22% and 26%. However, once we additionally control for institution quality and citations to RePEc pre-prints, the marginal HOA citation advantage turns out to insignificant and drops to 0.4%.

3,000 Fee Buying You?

With the spread of the internet and new opportunities for publishing academic works digitally at virtually no costs, the traditional copyright model has recently been put under critical review which is for at least two reasons: First and foremost, a vast increase in subscription prices for academic journals has forced (university) libraries to significantly cut their journal portfolios. Second, copyright seems negligible in academia as researchers are motivated by reputation gains and CV effects rather than direct financial returns from publishing their works. As a consequence, the promotion of Open Access (OA) to scientific research is claimed as the perceived future of academic publishing in the information age. This paper critically reviews the OA debate by discussing theoretical and empirical arguments on the role of copyright in publishing scientific outcomes. A brief historical perspective introduces to the changed environmental conditions for scholarly publishing, pointing to a new trade-off in the digital age. By framing the debate in a broader literature stream and related issues, we provide with caveat for further research and a glimpse of possible future scenarios. It is shown that copyright may be both a blessing and a curse in establishing an effective framework for scientific progress.

Academic Publishing and Open Access

The regulation of parallel trade is a fiercely debated issue in the global trading system. This paper investigates the welfare effects of parallel trade freedom for different levels of trade costs and market size. It is found that parallel trade freedom has a positive effect on global welfare if countries are sufficiently heterogeneous in terms of market size and trade costs are sufficiently low. Contrary to intuition, this result even holds in a situation where parallel trade freedom implies the closure of the smaller market. If, however, countries are virtually homogenous in terms of market size, parallel trade freedom may be detrimental to global welfare for specific levels of trade costs.

Parallel Trade and its Ambiguous Effects on Global Welfare

We analyse optimal pricing and quality of a monopolistic journal and the optimality of open access in a two-sided model. The predominant aspect of the model that determines the quality levels at which open access is optimal is the nature of the (non-linear) externalities between readers and authors in a journal. We show that there exist scenarios in which open access is a feature of high-quality journals. Besides, we find that the removal of copyright (and thus forced open access) will likely increase both readership and authorship, will decrease journal profits, and may increase social welfare.

Optimal Pricing and Quality of Academic Journals and the Ambiguous Welfare Effects of Forced Open Access: A Two-Sided Model

Despite the rapidly growing volume and economic importance of data in the digital economy, the legal framework for data ownership, access and trade remains incompletely defined in the EU and elsewhere. De facto data ownership dominates and often leads to fragmentation or anti-commons problems in data. Combined with limited access and trade, this inhibits the realisation of the full economic benefits of non-rival data. It may slow down innovation and affect the efficiency of data markets. We examine three potential sources of data market failures: externalities related to economies of scope in data, strategic behaviour of data owners and transaction costs in data exchanges. We link the legal debate on data ownership with relevant branches of the economics literature, including intellectual property rights economics, the commons and anti-commons literature, models of trade under the Arrow Information Paradox and multi-sided markets. Economists are inclined to think that well-defined private property rights are a necessary condition for an efficient resource allocation. The question in this paper is to what extent this view holds for non-rival data. We show that the allocation of data ownership or residual control rights matters, not only for private benefits but also for social welfare. The outcomes of bargaining over data ownership and access rights do not necessarily maximize social welfare. Can regulators intervene to improve these outcomes? Would a better specification of legal ownership rights or introducing access provisions to improve efficiency and reduce data market failures? There are no easy answers to these largely empirical questions. We offer no policy solutions yet and more research is required to bring economics up to speed with these questions.

The Economics of Ownership, Access and Trade in Digital Data

We analyze the effect of open access (OA) status of journal articles on citations. Using cross‐sectional and panel data from mathematics and economics, we perform negative binomial, Poisson, and generalized method of moments/instrumental variable methods regressions. We benefit from a natural experiment via hybrid OA pilot agreements. Citations to pre‐prints allow us to identify the intrinsic quality of articles prior to journal publication. Overall, our analysis suggests that there is no hybrid OA citation benefit. However, for the subpopulation of articles without OA pre‐ or post‐prints, we find positive hybrid OA effects for the full sample and each discipline separately. (JEL L17, O33, A11)

How Many More Cites is a

Universities in developing countries have rarely been able to subscribe to academic journals in the past. The “Online Access to Research in the Environment” initiative (OARE) provides institutions in developing countries with free online access to more than 5,700 environmental science journals. Here we analyze the effect of OARE on scientific output in five developing countries. We apply difference-in-difference estimation using panel data for 18,955 articles from 798 research institutions. We find that online access via OARE increases publication output by at least 43% while lower-ranked institutions located in remote areas benefit less. Results are robust when we apply instrumental variables to account for information diffusion and Bayesian estimation to control for self-selection

3,000 Open Access Fee Buying You? Empirical Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Replication studies are considered a hallmark of good scientific practice. Yet they are treated among researchers as an ideal to be professed but not practiced. To provide incentives and favorable boundary conditions for replication practice, the main stakeholders need to be aware of what drives replication. Here we investigate how often replication studies are published in empirical economics and what types of journal articles are replicated. We find that from 1974 to 2014 less than 0.1% of publications in the top-50 economics journals were replications. We do not find empirical support that mandatory data disclosure policies or the availability of data or code have a significant effect on the incidence of replication. The mere provision of data repositories may be ineffective, unless accompanied by appropriate incentives. However, we find that higher-impact articles and articles by authors from leading institutions are more likely to be subject of published replication studies whereas the replication probability is lower for articles published in higher-ranked journals.

Does Online Access Promote Research in Developing Countries

Abstract Existing theory suggests that three “order effects” may emerge in multi-stage tournaments with information feedback. First, participants adjust effort across stages, which could advantage the leading participant who faces a larger “effective prize” after an initial victory (leading-effect). Second, leading participants might engage in sabotage activities to protect their lead thereby decreasing the rivals’ output. Finally, participants lagging behind may increase risk at the final stage as they have “nothing to lose” (risk-taking). The expected order effects based on existing theory cannot be supported empirically in a natural experiment setting, where professional teams compete in a two-stage tournament with asymmetric initial conditions and clear incentives.