Events

This paper develops new procedures to measure environmental performance in cross-country firm-level data, explore the heterogeneity in environmental performance and its relationship with economic performance based on data from Croatia, France, Indonesia, and Lithuania. It documents extensive firm heterogeneity in carbon productivity (defined as value added per tonne of CO2 emitted) within narrowly defined industries, which significantly exceeds the extent of heterogeneity in labour productivity. On average, the 90th percentile firm is 22 times more carbon productive than the 10th percentile firm in the same industry (compared with seven times for labour productivity). This heterogeneity has important implications for aggregate emissions: raising the carbon productivity of the least productive firms to the carbon productivity of the median firm in their industry would reduce carbon emissions by 72% for the same level of output in total across the four countries. Furthermore, a growing carbon productivity dispersion is associated with a lower carbon productivity growth. Industries that are more dispersed in carbon productivity are also more dispersed in labour productivity and firms that are more carbon productive are also more labour productive, even when controlling for other factors. These correlations also hold in changes over time and suggest that structural characteristics of both firms and industries may jointly explain both economic and environmental outcomes. Firm-level regressions show that a plausibly exogenous increase in energy prices – as would be induced by a carbon tax – cause a significant fall in CO2 and an improvement in carbon productivity, without detrimental economic effects. This evidence suggests that there is a significant untapped potential of improved environmental performance and reduction in industrial emissions, and that these improvements could be achieved without affecting economic performance.

Contact person: Albert Roger

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This research discusses the relationship between employee perceptions of sustainable human resource management and job satisfaction in 54 countries. The authors propose that sustainable HRM is positively associated with job satisfaction but that this relationship is moderated by employees’ identification with the organization and country-level individualism–collectivism. Thus, the authors suggest national culture functions as a second level moderator of the relationship of sustainable HRM with organizational identification on job satisfaction. Findings from the multi-level analyses using data from 14,502 employees nested within 54 countries provided support for our hypotheses, namely that employee perceptions of sustainable HRM were positively associated with job satisfaction and that this relationship was more pronounced for employees with lower levels compared to higher levels of organizational identification in individualistic rather than collectivistic countries. These findings bear important implications for both theory and practice.

We analyze the relationship between firms’ ability to leverage regulatory slack and their market entry strategies. Using newly constructed genomic measures of disease market similarity, we systematically document evidence of forum shopping, whereby pharmaceutical firms seek the most lenient regulatory environment for approval when drugs have multiple potential therapeutic uses. Firms seek regulatory approval in smaller disease markets to lower the costs of regulation and rely on complementary, non-regulatory pathways - in the form of unapproved, “off-label” drug use - to expand demand. Our data allow us to characterize the degree to which new technologies can exploit such opportunities, shedding light on how firms navigate regulatory environments to speed the entry of new products to market.

Contact person: Elisabeth Hofmeister

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Following the Covid-19 pandemic, member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) are currently negotiating a Pandemic Preparedness Agreement to prepare the world for future pandemics. The draft agreement includes a mechanism for pathogen access and benefit-sharing under Article 12, which requires users of pathogens with pandemic potential, such as vaccine manufacturers, to provide fixed percentages of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics to the WHO in case of a pandemic as well as annual payments.

One key challenge in the negotiations is whether access to sequence data should be limited as an enforcement mechanism for this mechanism. However, there is no research on how de-coupled approaches to benefit-sharing, that is, approaches that do not limit access to pathogen material and data, could be used to monitor compliance. Our research investigates the sequence data disclosed in patent applications as an indicator for benefit-sharing and compliance monitoring.

Using bioinformatics tools, we identify the users of nucleotide sequences from pathogens with pandemic potential. Our preliminary data suggests that 98% of patents disclosing nucleotide sequence data from pathogens with pandemic potential relate to vaccines, therapeutics, or diagnostics.  However, these patents often include sequences from various organisms, not exclusively pathogens with pandemic potential under the WHO agreement. This indicates that this potential monitoring mechanism would also need to be harmonized with other international instruments governing access and benefit-sharing such as the Convention on Biological Diversity.

The project is part of a work stream within the NIH-funded consortium Pathogen Data Network led by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and part of a work package of the European Viral Outbreak Response Alliance funded by the European Union's HORIZON program.

Contact person: Peter Slowinski

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This paper analyzes M&A patterns of R&D projects in the antidiabetics industry. For this purpose, we construct a database with all corporate individual antidiabetics R&D projects over the period 1997–2017 and add detailed information on firms’ technology dimension using patent information, next to their position in product markets. This allows us to identify the identity of targets and acquirers (who), the timing of acquisitions along the R&D process (when), and which type of R&D projects changes hands in terms of technology novelty (what). The main results can be summarized as follows. First, most of the action in M&As is in early R&D stages, still far from product markets. Second, most of the early-stage projects that change hands are high-risk/high-gain novel projects. Third, the industry leaders in the product markets are rather inactive in acquiring those novel early-stage projects. The likely acquirers of such projects are small or pipeline firms. Our results put into perspective the narrative that large incumbents acquire small targets with low-risk projects close to product launch. (joint work with J. Malek, J. Seldeslachts and R. Veugelers)

Contact person: Elisabeth Hofmeister

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Contact person: Daehyun Kim

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Contact person: Benedikt Probst

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Contact person: Benedict Probst

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Contact person: Michael Rose

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Contact person: Cheng Li

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