Approval Threshold Research Articles

Institutional Support for Digital Transformation of Regions of the Russian Federation

Studying the issues of institutional support for the digital transformation of regions of the Russian Federation is important for understanding the current state and development prospects in the context of modern challenges and opportunities. A study was conducted on the regulatory framework for the digital transformation of the Russian economy. It also examined digital transformation strategies of various economic sectors, the social sphere, and public administration. The study identified that Russian regions differ in terms of the number of industries, planned projects, and the number of indicative indicators defined in their strategies. The gap between the leading region, the Republic of Tatarstan, and the Altai Republic, which closes the ranking of Russian regions in terms of the number of projects being implemented, was 8.4 times. It has been established that areas whose impact on the digital transformation process is extremely significant are very limited in regional projects. It is shown that the digital transformation strategies of all regions of the Russian Federation define a wider range of indicative indicators. The Chechen Republic, which has the smallest number of indicators among Russian regions, exceeds the approved threshold by 3 times, and the Perm Krai (the leader in the number of indicators) by 17.6 times. This allows regional authorities to take into account the industry and strategic guidelines of the region, identify problem areas, and take the necessary measures in the process of digital transformation.

Experimentation and Approval Mechanisms

We study the design of approval rules when costly experimentation must be delegated to an agent with misaligned preferences. When the agent has the option to end experimentation, we show that in contrast to standard stopping problems, the optimal approval rule must be history‐dependent. We characterize the optimal rule and show the approval threshold moves downward over the course of experimentation. We find that private information may qualitatively change the optimal mechanism: an agent can choose a fast‐track option in the form of an initially depressed approval threshold. On expiry of the fast track, the threshold jumps up, introducing more stringent standards. Our results provide a theoretical foundation for both the loosening of approval standards on longer experimentation paths and fast‐track mechanisms.

Modifying the Criteria for Granting Orphan Drug Market Exclusivity.

To examine policy options to deny orphan drug exclusivity after drugs exceed a target population of 200 000 across all orphan indications (combined prevalence threshold) or once drugs receive a nonorphan approval (market approval threshold). Retrospective analysis of drugs with 2 or more orphan approvals from 1983 to July 01, 2017 examining prevalence of orphan indications and approval years of orphan and nonorphan indications. Characteristics of drugs crossing either threshold are described. A budget impact analysis of Medicare and Marketscan® claims databases estimated potential savings from generic or biosimilar entry as a result of foregone market exclusivity periods determined by these policies. Out of 86 drugs with 2 or more orphan approvals, 21 drugs would be denied orphan drug exclusivity periods under the prevalence threshold and 18 drugs would be denied orphan drug exclusivity periods under the market approval threshold. Drugs with orphan approvals after 2010 were more likely to be denied orphan drug exclusivity. In 2017, Medicare could have saved about $2 billion on 8 drugs under the prevalence threshold policy and $1.3 billion on 12 drugs under the market approval threshold policy). Private insurers could have saved $814 and $919 million, respectively. Over half of the savings would come from 9 drugs that first entered the market for a nonorphan indication. Modifying the criteria for granting orphan drug exclusivity would affect a small number of orphan drugs but could generate large savings through increased competition. Other incentives such as grants or tax credits for clinical trials could be explored to incentivize research for new orphan indications for drugs that crossed either threshold.

Vote Buying in the US Congress

We assess the influence of moneyed interests on legislative decisions. Our theory predicts that the vote outcome distribution and donation flows in a legislature feature a discontinuity at the approval threshold of bills if special interest groups are involved in vote buying. Testing the theoretical predictions based on two decades of roll-call voting in the U.S. House, we identify the link between narrowly passed bills and well-timed campaign contributions. Several pieces of evidence substantiate our main finding, suggesting that moneyed interests exert remarkably effective control over the passage of contested bills

Why the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is not (so) new, and why it is also not (so) bad

ABSTRACTDe Ville and Siles-Brügge (2016) argue that the politics of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations are entirely new and that it will lead to ‘regulatory chill’. We think these two statements are untenable from a logical and empirical standpoint. While distributive political conflict is relatively absent because of firms’ integration into global value chains, civil society organizations voice value-based opposition to the prospective agreement, just like in the past. TTIP is also unlikely to undermine contracting parties’ ability to regulate the market to promote fundamental social values, because regulatory convergence is generally decided upon in a piece-meal fashion, and is subject to a super-majoritarian (dis)approval threshold in the Council, the European Parliament and national parliaments. Moreover, we show why it is plausible to expect TTIP to result in an upgrading of world trade rules, a benign development on the global level.

The Cost of Supermajority Target Shareholder Approval: Mergers versus Tender Offers

Using a 2013 Delaware law that reduces the approval threshold from 90% to 50% to conduct a short-form merger after a tender offer, we investigate whether variation in the required level of shareholder support affects acquisition outcomes. We find that lower authorization requirements increase the use of tender offers relative to mergers for Delaware targets. Further, Delaware targets collectively receive greater acquisition premiums and returns after the passage of the new law relative to target firms incorporated other states. We do not find evidence that managers use the lower threshold to extract private benefits. Our results suggest that supermajority shareholder approval is unnecessary for tender offers and can increase the risk of holdup by activist investors.

Multi-criteria approval for evaluating landscape management strategies (Case study: Fruska Gora National Park)

This paper deals with the problem of multi-criteria evaluation of four management strategies for Fruska Gora National Park. The criteria set was defined in ac?cordance with the IUCN guidelines for management of national parks. Four strategies were evaluated by testing preference intensities for each alternative with the respect to each cri?terion. Alternatives with preference above the approval threshold were approved, and a multi-criteria approval matrix was generated. According to the matrix, the most suitable management strategy was identified. It implies an intense protection of natural resources and landscape diversity in the national park by applying bio-engineering measures. This illustrative example proved that multi-criteria approval can be considered as a good deci?sion support tool when there is no need for a deeper insight into cardinal values of criteria weights and alternatives, or if the decision maker has to select few from many of alterna?tives to reduce the decision problem. For a more precise analysis, it is recommended to combine multi-criteria approval with other decision support tools, and future studies might deal with this problem in order to define an alternative framework for decision making in landscape management.

The diminished pipeline for medications to treat mental health and substance use disorders.

Psychotropic drug development is perceived to be lagging behind other pharmaceutical development, even though there is a need for more effective psychotropic medications. This study examined the state of the current psychotropic drug pipeline and potential barriers to psychotropic drug development. The authors scanned the recent academic and "grey" literature to evaluate psychotropic drug development and to identify experts in the fields of psychiatry and substance use disorder treatment and psychotropic drug development. On the basis of that preliminary research, the authors interviewed six experts and analyzed drugs being studied for treatment of major psychiatric disorders in phase III clinical trials. Interviews and review of clinical trials of drugs in phase III of development confirmed that the psychotropic pipeline is slim and that a majority of the drugs in phase III trials are not very innovative. Among the barriers to development are incentives that encourage firms to focus on incremental innovation rather than take risks on radically new approaches. Other barriers include human brain complexity, failure of animal trials to translate well to human trials, and a drug approval threshold that is perceived as so high that it discourages development. Drivers of innovation in psychotropic drug development largely parallel those for other drugs, yet crucial distinctions have led to slowing psychotropic development after a period of innovation and growth. Various factors have acted to dry up the pipeline for psychotropic drugs, with expert opinion suggesting that in the near term, this trend is likely to continue.

The Use of Schemes of Arrangement to Effect Takeovers: A Comparative Analysis

Schemes of arrangement originated in England but have since spread to a number of other common law jurisdictions. One of the most common uses of schemes is to effect a change of control transaction, as an alternative to a takeover offer. In some jurisdictions schemes have become the mechanism of choice for recommended bids. Jurisdictions differ in their response to this use of schemes. As regards English schemes, the legislative provisions, the courts and the regulatory authorities are neutral as to whether a change of control is effected by way of a scheme or a takeover offer. By contrast, some jurisdictions, such as Australia, have put in place legislative provisions that potentially constrain this use of schemes, and other jurisdictions make changes to the operation of schemes (such as increasing the approval threshold) which seem designed to respond to concerns regarding the operation of schemes in this context. This paper explores the use of schemes to effect change of control transactions, including their advantages and disadvantages compared to a takeover offer. The concerns raised regarding this use of schemes are discussed and analysed, and the approach regarding English schemes is compared with that of other jurisdictions where a different approach is taken. These include Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. The paper questions whether the English approach can be defended, and concludes that it can, as a result of the significant safeguards in place to prevent abuse, in particular the oversight of the court in the process and the fact that the UK Takeover Code covers change of control transactions effected via schemes as well as via takeover offers.

Fitting operational risk data using limited information below the threshold

This paper presents a methodology to calibrate the distribution of losses observed in operational risk events. The method is specifically designed to handle the situation where individual event information is only available above an approved threshold and there is a limited set of below-threshold information (BTI). The method requires the use of the number of events and the sum of the losses below the threshold. the authors demonstrate the improved stability of the fitted distribution parameters as the number of events above the threshold is reduced. This is compared with the conventional truncated maximum likelihood estimator (MLE). To demonstrate the improved stability of the parameter estimation using the BTI, a series of fits are performed to m samples of N events drawn from a lognormal distribution, and these are compared with estimates of the truncated MLE. The BTI fitting methodology produces a better estimator of the population distribution parameters, with reduced bias and dispersion. the authors estimate the 99.9th percentile of the severity distribution and show that the BTI provides a better estimator of the percentile with reduced uncertainty.

LINGUISTIC SUMMARIZATION OF DATABASES WITH QUANTIRIUS: A REDUCTION ALGORITHM FOR GENERATED SUMMARIES

This paper deals with the issue of linguistic database summaries understood as linguistically quantified propositions. We show basic capabilities of Quantirius, our interactive system supporting the mining and the assessment of linguistic summaries in a database. The mining of linguistic summaries is realized by means of the concept of a protoform introduced by Zadeh. The assessment of validity degrees of summaries is done via Zadeh's fuzzy logic based calculus, extended by the use of cardinality patterns and triangular norms. The main part of the paper presents an idea of a further processing of the set of generated summaries. The proposed algorithm is composed of a reduction mechanism of summaries based on linguistic terms inclusion and a reduction of summaries by means of the overlapping unimodal linguistic terms. We then present an idea of the approval threshold computing for the truth degrees of summaries. Finally, we show that summaries generated by different protoforms can be joined in a master-detail-like relation, making an interesting structure of information contained in the database.

Vignettes to identify the ethical domain of an emerging country's banking sector: the experience of Turkey

The fiduciary dimension of the banking business creates a high potential for ethical violations and financial fraud leading to systemic crisis, regardless of national boundaries. In emerging markets, the lack of adequate legal and regulatory systems in the financial sector facilitates the exploitation of a free moral space. The moral integrity of bank managers, as guardians of others' money, is crucial to the sustainability of the system. This study aims to assess the ethicality of some banking practices as perceived by top bank managers in Turkey, an emerging market. To this purpose 22 sector-specific vignettes that describe possible misconduct were developed and a field survey conducted. Vignettes were mailed to top managers of all the banks. The response rate was 29%. The findings, on the whole, indicate a high level of ethical awareness on the part of banks' top managers. The respondents' approval threshold is higher when the stockholder demands to be successful in the short run, at the expense of the customers and the other stakeholders of the bank. Another finding is that the respondents do not consider extending partial treatment to those with whom the manager has a care relationship as a violation of ethical norms.

Fuzzy Multicriteria Approval Method and its Application to Two Forest Planning Problems

Abstract Many different multicriteria decision aid methods have been used in forestry decision support. When opinions of the general public are considered, methods that are simple to understand and easy to use are required. One such method is multicriteria approval (MA). It is based on approval voting, where the voters have been replaced by criteria. In MA, alternatives are approved or rejected with respect to each voter, i.e., each criterion. In the basic version, the approval threshold is crisp and defined by the system. The varying importance of the criteria is considered using the concept of ordinal dominance. Thus, the importance order of the criteria is needed to make a recommendation. The basic MA approach favors solutions that may be mediocre with respect to all criteria. A crisp approval threshold used in MA may also lead to awkward recommendations. We propose a new method using a concept of fuzzy approval for solving these problems. The fuzzy approval also easily extends to group decision-making problems. Two forestry applications are presented, where the fuzzy version of MA is tested and compared to the results of original MA. The possibilities of using fuzzy approval in forestry decision support are discussed.

A Theory of Utilization Review

Through utilization review (UR), managed care organizations (MCOs) monitor and alter physician treatment decisions. We show that the value of UR depends on physician incentives. Not surprisingly, when physicians have incentives to significantly overtreat patients, UR can improve social welfare by eliminating unnecessary utilization. More surprisingly, UR can also improve welfare when physicians have incentives to significantly undertreat patients. In this case, UR filters out the least valuable cases, encouraging physicians to recommend more treatments. We also show that the effectiveness of UR depends on MCO precommitment to a treatment approval threshold. Ex ante optimal precommitment can make it appear that the MCO is inappropriately withholding care ex post.

Establishing the face validity of the criteria of teaching competence in the Leicester package for the assessment of teaching skills (L-PAST) for tutor-led, task-orientated small-group teaching

Testing the face validity of criteria of teaching competence, developed for the Leicester package for the assessment of teaching skills (L-PAST) for tutor-led, task-orientated small-group teaching, involved a postal questionnaire sent to a sample of medical members of the Association of University Departments of General Practice. Their views on the six categories and 39 components of competence contained in L-PAST were sought on a six-point Likert scale. The survey population was given the opportunity to reject or suggest new categories or components or to reallocate components to other categories. There was minimal support for excluding any Categories or components or for moving any components to different categories. The components which failed to reach the 70% approval threshold came predominantly from the category 'structuring teaching'. The L-PAST has been modified accordingly. Student opinion was also sought on the suggested L-PAST categories and their component competences. In general, students and...