Drop In Prices Research Articles

Crude oil price changes and exchange rate: Case of oil exporting countries in CEMAC

Purpose: Policy makers, academics and journalists have frequently discussed the link between oil prices and exchange rate in recent years. After the 2014 World’s biggest oil price drop that plunge CEMAC oil exporting countries into an external liquidity strain, due to the pressure raised on Euro to which CFA franc is pegged, this paper revisits the dependence between crude oil price changes and exchange rate.
 Methodology: Crude oil price is the main independent variable, though other independent variables have been considered. The change in crude oil price is captured through differentiation of average yearly crude oil prices. The real effective exchange rate (RER) is the dependent variable, captured with the consumer’s price index (CPI), which describes the strength of a currency relative to a basket of other currencies. The data used in this study were extracted from Word Bank Development Indicators (WBDI, 2020) and World Bank Commodity Price Data. The study covers the period 1990-2018. The main channels of transmission used in this paper are the terms of trade channel, the wealth or portfolio channel and the anticipation or expectation channel. A panel autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) model was used.
 Findings: The result shows that there is a short run positive and insignificant effect of oil price changes on exchange rate of CEMAC oil producing countries. In the long-run, there is rather a negative and significant impact of oil price changes on exchange rate. More concretely, a unit increase in oil prices depreciates exchange rate of these countries by 0.4340 units and this is significant at 1%. The short run Cross-country analysis shows that the effect is negatively significant for Cameroon and Chad; positive and significant for Democratic Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea; but positive and not significant for Gabon. These results are likely linked to structural differences between countries as the dependence on oil revenue and the security situation are concerned.
 Recommendations: Given this negative long run damage of oil prices on exchange rate of CEMAC oil producing countries, it is highly advisable these countries increase direct investments in key economic non-oil sectors in order to reduce dependence. On the other hand, considering the unidirectional causality from exchange rate to oil prices, a policy of exchange rate anchor by BEAC is suitable in order to absorb the shock of oil price changes on exchange rate and eventually inflation in the these economies.

Equity implications of market structure and appliance energy efficiency regulation

Minimum efficiency standards for products such as appliances are economically efficient when they correct a market failure. Negative ramifications of these standards, particularly for credit constrained or low-income consumers, such as increased prices or decreased choice, are contingent on the pricing behavior of suppliers. We use market point of sales data to estimate the change in price and efficiency of clothes washers following the change in United States minimum efficiency standards in 2004 and 2007, differentiated by market segment. With a relatively narrow confidence interval, the average price of the baseline market segment did not change significantly concurrent with either the 2004 or 2007 standard change, while efficiency of these products increased by 30%, resulting in significant financial savings for consumers of the least expensive baseline products. The highest efficiency products experienced a significant drop in price and increase in efficiency as well, particularly following the 2007 standard change. The results suggest that the effect of this increase in minimum efficiency standards for clothes washers was beneficial to all consumers, but particularly those with lower incomes or renters. Low-income consumers were not priced out of the market, but rather benefited particularly. We offer discussion of potential explanations of these findings.

Measures to Neutralize the Consequences of Sanctions Against Russia at the Federal and Regional Levels

The Russian ruble depreciated sharply in 2014 after the US embargo was imposed, in just one day it lost 19% of its value, which was the biggest daily drop in the previous 16 years. Inflation has reached a three-year high. The reasons for the sharp decline in the indicators of the Russian economy were the factors of a sharp drop in oil prices, sanctions against the country and insufficient effective management. The article discusses Russia’s anti-sanctions actions at the federal and regional levels of government. It is concluded that the following measures have become the most effective in responding to sanctions: the introduction of import sanctions against countries subject to the embargo, reducing dependence on the dollar and euro in foreign trade (de-dollarization) by concluding bilateral currency agreements, changing export directions, introducing a national payment system, adopting import substitution plans within federal and regional policies, as well as a plan to support firms affected by sanctions. It is noted that the sanctions posed threats not only to the economy of Russia and its regions, but also to the economies of European countries and, ultimately, to the stability of the global financial system.

Macroeconomic effects of fiscal rules for a commodity-exporting economy: avoiding procyclical bias in Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the macroeconomic consequences of an alternative fiscal rule in the context of commodity price shocks for a commodity-exporting country. We build a DSGE model to explain the business cycle in an oil-exporting economy, estimated using macroeconomic data from Kazakhstan. Our results demonstrate that when fiscal policy is procyclical in response to a transitory negative oil price shock, and if a majority of households are non-Ricardian, then a one standard deviation drop in oil prices causes an output decline of about 0.19%. In contrast, if the fiscal policy is countercyclical and conducted according to the structural balance fiscal rule, output increases by about 0.13% in response to the same shock. We also report that countercyclical fiscal policy is robustly effective when the monetary policy is characterized by its active inflation stabilization framework.

A new structural multivariate GARCH-BEKK Model: Causality of green, sustainable and fossil energy ETFs

The article examines exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for green and sustainable energy regarding causality in their asset returns and volatilities. The structural vector autoregressive (VAR) model is one of the popular methodologies for the empirical analysis of macroeconomics and finance. However, the analysis is limited to the conditional mean, and excludes the structural analysis of conditional covariance models which measure the volatility and co-volatility of the financial asset returns. In order to accommodate this limitation, we develop a new structural multivariate GARCH-BEKK model that accommodates a dimension reduction for a BEKK-type parameterization of the time-varying covariance structure. We use a quasi-maximum likelihood estimator, which is shown to have consistency and asymptotic normality. For energy ETF returns, we construct the structural GARCH-BEKK model in order to investigate the causality in returns and volatility via statistical tests and impulse response functions, especially for two events, namely a drop in crude oil prices on May 5, 2011, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011. Our empirical results have found that for the portfolio renewable energy ETFs, Solar, Wind, and Water seem to exhibit indirect mutual causality effects in mean, and direct mutual causality effects in the second moment. When we incorporate the oil market into the renewable energy market, Oil seems to dominate the causality effects, so indirect uni- causality effects of the mean from the Oil to the Solar ETF, or Oil to the Water ETF, are found. However, there are no uni-causality or mutual causality effects in the second moment.

The roles of oil shocks and geopolitical uncertainties on China’s green bond returns

This research assesses the linkages among oil shocks, geopolitical uncertainties, and green bond returns based on a structural vector autoregression framework for China from January 2010 to May 2021. Evidence reveals that oil-specific demand shocks significantly affect geopolitical uncertainty and green bond dynamics. An unanticipated positive change in oil prices triggers an increase in geopolitical risks and a reduction in green bond returns. The results also demonstrate that positive changes in geopolitical risks come with a drop in oil prices and a rise in green bond returns, but the influence of geopolitical shocks is heterogeneous, depending upon which categories of risk are considered. Geopolitical acts negatively affect oil prices, while geopolitical threats have a significantly positive impact on green bond returns. Understanding these relationships can therefore enable investors and regulators to develop and enforce appropriate policies to help overcome oil shocks and fluctuations in geopolitical risks.

Structure of GDP growth rates in Russia up to 2024

By the fall of 2021, the Russian economy had practically overcome the crisis caused by coronavirus pandemic and sharp drop in oil prices in the first half of 2020, having returned in terms of GDP, industrial production and investment in fixed assets to pre-crisis levels. At the same time, the prospects for further growth of the Russian economy remain uncertain, since both in the short and long term, the balance of factors affecting the growth rate of Russia’s GDP is shifted to a negative area. These external factors include the growing risks of a new financial and/or economic crisis in the world’s leading economies (including China), imposing large-scale sanctions against Russia in connection with a special operation in Ukraine, the instability of world commodity markets, as well as the processes of decarbonization and restructuring of the world economy. Internal factors of growth comprise increased investment activity of private and state-owned companies (and in the field of national projects), expansion of non-resource non-energy exports, while internal growth constraints comprise possible decline in the working-age population in Russia and slow growth of the real personal income. According to the official forecast by the RF Ministry of Economic Development, after the recovery acceleration of the economy by 4.2% in 2021 (the first estimate by Rosstat — 4.7%), GDP growth will stabilize at about 3% per year in subsequent years. However, it is lower than expected growth rates of the world economy, but it is significantly higher than the average growth rates of the Russian economy over the past decade (about 0.7% per year).To reveal the growth rates structure, which corresponds to anticipated economic dynamics in Russia, we have used an approach based on identifying three components of GDP growth rates — structural, foreign trade, and business cycle ones. In this article a new decomposition method was applied, which assumes the neutrality of the foreign trade component if the oil price is at the average long-term values.In case of achievement of the RF Ministry of Economic Development forecast, actual and structural unemployment indicators convergence may lead to a shortage of labor in certain sectors of the Russian economy in 2022—2023. The solution to this problem lies in the sphere of external and internal migration policy intensification and measures for promoting inter-sectoral labor mobility. Estimates of the output gap show that it is advisable to pursue a stimulating fiscal policy in 2022 with a transition to neutrality in 2023—2024. Supporting the global spread of vaccines against coronavirus infection and the recovery of the global economy will contribute to an increase in oil prices and in the foreign trade component of economic growth in Russia.

Assessing the impact of sulfur cap on bunkering spot selection in the ARA region

The introduction of IMO2020, the outbreak of COVID-19, and the oil price drop in 2020 had a significant impact on operators’ operating profits. Therefore, a competitive analysis of bunkering spots that suggests the optimal location for bunkering is of interest. This paper uses a combination of primary and secondary research, both from operators’ and suppliers’ side, to identify the key performance factors (KPFs) affecting the decision-making process of a bunkering port selection process. Answers were then combined by using a fuzzy TOPSIS analytical approach to quantify the competitive position of each port in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) region. Results suggest that availability of low sulfur bunkers, bunker quality, bunker price, reliability, punctuality, and safety of bunkering services, as well as usage and availability of barges are the key KPFs in order of importance. Sulfur cap has not changed the competitive environment in the region as the geographic advantage of the port of Rotterdam plays a crucial role in the comparison with the other ports, in contrast to expressed concerns in the industry.

Prediction of House Price Using Machine Learning

Abstract: The trend of the sudden drop or constant rising of housing prices has attracted interest from the researcher as well as many other interested people. There have been various research works that use different methods and techniques to address the question of the changing of house prices. This work considers the issue of changing house price as a classification problem and discuss machine learning techniques to predict whether house prices will rise or fall using available data. This work applies various feature selection techniques such as variance influence factor, Information value, principle component analysis, and data transformation techniques such as outlier and missing value treatment as well as different transformation techniques. The performance of the machine learning techniques is measured by the four parameters of accuracy, precision, specificity, and sensitivity. The work considers two discrete values 0 and 1 as respective classes. If the value of the class is 0 then we consider that the price of the house has decreased and if the value of the class is 1 then we consider that the price of the house has increased.

Integrated optimization of pricing and relocation in the competitive carsharing market: A multi-leader-follower game model

One-way carsharing, as a shared mobility service, is attracting increasing attention due to its flexibility and social benefits. Spurred by this trend, an increasing number of companies have been formed, which promotes the expansion of the carsharing market. In the presence of intensifying competitive pressure, it has become imperative for companies to determine their optimal operational strategies by adjusting their pricing and relocation strategies to ensure financially sustainable service operations. Indeed, the most urgent issue that must be addressed is the modeling of an integrated framework combining the pricing and relocation strategies of operators in a competitive market. To solve this problem, a game-theoretical multi-leader–follower model is proposed to maximize the profit of each company involved and minimize the disutility of travelers, the Nash equilibrium solution of which is obtained by developing a diagonalization algorithm framework. Specifically, in each iteration, a bilevel model is solved to obtain the best response, which is the most favorable outcome for a certain company given competing companies’ strategies. The upper level aims to determine the pricing and relocation strategy of each company, while the lower level assigns trip demand by solving a stochastic user equilibrium problem. The proposed method is applied to a hypothetical case study and a realistic example in the context of Quanzhou city, China, and its performance is demonstrated by extensive sensitivity analysis. The results show that the total profits of the market rise with the number of companies increasing, but the average profit and price drop. Through a comparison between strategies with and without relocations, it is found that relocation strategies have a significant impact on raising profits of a company with a large fleet size.

The urge of algal biomass-based fuels for environmental sustainability against a steady tide of biofuel conflict analysis: Is third-generation algal biorefinery a boon?

To meet the rising demand for biofuel, food, and feed, as well as pharmaceuticals, microalgal-based biorefinery systems provide various advantages. Because of the worldwide energy crises, the future of microalgal biorefinery is attentively receiving prominence. Despite being renewable and carbon–neutral, microalgal-based technology produces net CO2 emissions. Due to poor market pricing for renewable fuels, current biomass conversion techniques are neither profitable nor long-term viable. The microalgal strain chosen is critical to the experiment's success. A comprehensive approach that considers all three aspects of environmental sustainability is required to successfully address these challenges. The process should never be jeopardized in any way that threatens its long-term viability. The issue of sustainability must therefore be addressed from the outset of every biorefinery project. It is necessary to investigate genetically altered microalgal strains with improved lipid content, light usage efficiency, pigment accumulation, and other features during the design phase of an algal-based biorefinery, among other things. This is due to the recent drop in crude oil prices, as well as the significant capital and investment costs associated with algae cultivation. Dewatering, harvesting, and lipid recovery must all be researched and developed at a low cost. To solve the problem of decreasing biomass productivities at bigger production scales, a new generation of photobioreactor designs, lighting strategies, and nutrient feed systems are required. To be successful, proponents of large-scale microalgae-based biorefineries must integrate social and sustainability sciences into their commercial plans. The current review explores the potential application of algal biomass for the production of biofuels and bio-based products. The variety of processes and pathways through which bioconversion of algal biomass can be performed are described in this review.

Negative Impact of Covid-19 On Oil Price and Export: An Assessment of CounterMeasures Taken by The Nigerian Government

The unprecedented outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected individuals and countries in diverse ways. One of such areas that have suffered a massive hit is the socio-economic aspect of man. Efforts to contain the spread resulted in close down of manufacturing centres of major economies of the world, travel restrictions, total lockdown, border closures and a host of others. This has negatively affected world trade as it has led to decrease in the demand of raw materials particularly crude oil by producers and drastic fall in its price following disagreement of oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Nigeria is greatly affected as it relies heavily on crude oil as its major export commodity coupled with an already weak economy. The negative impact of the drop in oil price and export is taking its toll on the economy. In a bid to manage the situation, the federal government has taken certain countermeasures. The study examined the negative impact of the drop in oil price and exports on the Nigerian economy and counter measures to checkmate the effects therein. By analyzing secondary data, the study found out that the negative impact on the Nigerian economy is drastic and there is a need to cushion its effects, some of the countermeasures identified include devaluation of the naira, extension of moratorium, review of the budget, release of 50 billion naira to households and affected SMES among others. The study recommends that there is increased need to diversify the economy and increase local production.

Covid-19 and energy sector: Unique opportunity for switching to clean energy

The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) was extended to 213 countries globally by August 2021. The world has been threatened by rising infection rates and emerged as the catastrophic event in the field of health triggering the international emergency panic button. COVID-19′s sudden arrival wreaked havoc on the world economic picture, particularly in the energy sector. A steep drop in oil prices, as well as an imbalance in energy, was the result of strict travel restrictions, fewer transportation options, and people's fears of a flu pandemic. However, confined mobility and a drop in energy demand coated the environment with a silver line and drowned the nation's economic opportunities. Industrial transport, and not to mention every conventional energy-related thing, is completely devastated, but renewables were immunized. Wind, solar, hydrothermal, hydrogen, biomass-based energy systems were on high gear yielding maximum results in counterbalancing the demand–supply chain.Moreover, the pandemic created an opportunity to showcase the importance of renewable energy and tackle the difficult emergency like now. In addition to this, the mindset of the investors was slowly fading away from conventional fuels and shifting towards renewable energy. However, it is too early to state the booming renewables at the moment, and no idea about its long-time survival. Thus, the present review gives a clear picture of the current status of fossils and renewables, the impact of a pandemic, energy investments, government policy standings, threats, and opportunities, and finally, the key takeaways avoiding energy scarcity in once a lifetime disaster situation.

Guest Editorial: Will the Omicron Variant Lead to the Collapse of Oil Prices?

With the Omicron variant continuing to spread around the world, will a drop in oil prices follow? Maybe, but probably only in the short term. Equity markets tanked Friday, 26 November 2021, on fears that the Omicron variant, first identified in South Africa, would sharply impact worldwide economic output. The nearly 1,000-point loss in the Dow wiped nearly $90 billion of value in Dow equities. Oil prices were particularly hit hard, dropping nearly 10% from Thursday’s close. That drop, however, was minor compared to what happened to prices in early 2020, when at the end of April oil prices had dropped nearly 70% in value. This was frightening and was a combined pessimistic response to fears of demand destruction due to the coronavirus and the price war initiated by OPEC and Russia to counter rising production from US shale oil producers. As a world economy, we had not faced a major health crisis since 2014 when Ebola fears gripped the world and in 2009 when H1N1 flu sickened 60.8 million and killed 12,469 in the US, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). If we go back to the 1918 Spanish flu, Fig. 1 shows the gross US demographic impact of these pandemics. The 1918 Spanish flu infected about 28% of the US population but did not impact oil prices to any great degree. COVID-19 has infected about 15% of our fellow citizens but has caused nearly 125,000 more deaths because our population is about three times larger than it was in 1918. In our current COVID-19 pandemic, images of first responders desperately improvising to save lives, stories of grief-stricken children, and partners forced to provide remote comfort to isolated and suffering elders tested our confidence that there would ever be a “normal” American life in the future. How Did Oil Markets React? The pre-COVID price of oil (CLF) in late 2019 dropped by 73% to its low in April 2020. Fears of demand destruction due to COVID dropped the price from $63/bbl to around $40/bbl—a 36% drop (Fig. 2). Price pressure was further exacerbated by OPEC’s price war with Russia, with OPEC increasing its output by a factor of four during a short window going into and lasting through April 2020. This dropped the price of oil another 40–50%. Once OPEC ended its price war, the baseline price of oil was around $40/bbl. When Moderna and Pfizer announced their vaccines, and the CDC authorized their emergency use, prices recovered until late July 2021 when the US entered its third wave of increasing case counts and rising death counts.

Disrupted dreams of development: neoliberal efficiency and crisis in Angola

AbstractThanks to oil revenues, since the end of the war in 2002, Angola has largely eschewed the usual donor conditionalities in its state-led reconstruction process; the 2014 oil price drop, however, revealed the limits of this economic miracle. Coupled with a long-overdue political transition inside the ruling party, this moment of designated crisis has opened up spaces for elites to inject their continued projects of accumulation with the moralizing language of neoliberalism – talk of efficiency, responsibility, and the proverbial tightening of the belt. Based on fieldwork around the recently modernized transport hub of Lobito, the article examines how these tropes have been deployed and adapted, first to position Angola as a ‘business-friendly’ environment, and then to justify largely self-inflicted austerity measures. By examining the everyday working of real existing neoliberalism through the eyes of the port’s users, the article suggests that Angola’s turbulent history provides a fertile ground to advance, in this moment of crisis, agendas of capital capture, cloaking them in the mantle of common-sensical reasonableness and national solidarity.

Blood in the water: The value of antitakeover provisions during market shocks

During market-wide shocks that cause large drops in stock prices, firms with more state-endorsed antitakeover provisions (ATPs) experience smaller declines in value. Two channels appear to drive this finding. First, by giving boards more bargaining power to fight opportunistic bids, firms with more ATPs extract higher takeover premiums during market shocks. Second, having more ATPs attenuates the effect of market shocks on firm value by protecting relationship-specific investments with stakeholders from disruptive takeovers. Our results suggest that ATPs benefit shareholders during market shocks when firm values are abnormally low and represent one advantage of incorporating in states with more ATPs.

Energy crypto currencies and leading U.S. energy stock prices: are Fibonacci retracements profitable?

This paper investigates the role of Fibonacci retracements levels, a popular technical analysis indicator, in predicting stock prices of leading U.S. energy companies and energy cryptocurrencies. The study methodology focuses on applying Fibonacci retracements as a system compared with the buy-and-hold strategy. Daily crypto and stock prices were obtained from the Standard & Poor's composite 1500 energy index and CoinMarketCap between November 2017 and January 2020. This study also examined if the combined Fibonacci retracements and the price crossover strategy result in a higher return per unit of risk. Our findings revealed that Fibonacci retracement captures energy stock price changes better than cryptos. Furthermore, most price violations were frequent during price falls compared to price increases, supporting that the Fibonacci instrument does not capture price movements during up and downtrends, respectively. Also, fewer consecutive retracement breaks were observed when the price violations were examined 3 days before the current break. Furthermore, the Fibonacci-based strategy resulted in higher returns relative to the naïve buy-and-hold model. Finally, complementing Fibonacci with the price cross strategy did not improve the results and led to fewer or no trades for some constituents. This study’s overall findings elucidate that, despite significant drops in oil prices, speculators (traders) can implement profitable strategies when using technical analysis indicators, like the Fibonacci retracement tool, with or without price crossover rules.

APPLICATION OF TECHNICAL ANALYSIS FOR CRYPTOCURRENCY MARKET RESEARCH

The article is to research the possibilities and prospects of using graphical technical analysis for forecasting the movement of asset prices by an Internet trader using the example of Bitcoin (BTC – BitCoin). The theoretical and methodological aspects of cryptocurrency technical analysis in the conditions of modern financial markets were analyzed. A comparative analysis of short- and medium-term technical analysis strategies in Internet trading was carried out. Cryptocurrency-applied technical analysis was used to determine current trends of the Bitcoin growth cycle. The research methods included comparative analysis, and graphical and analytical methods of technical analysis such as the method of observing price movement, capitalization analysis, pattern identification, support/resistance levels identification, indicators use and comparison, and bars analysis (Japanese candles). Cryptocurrency analysis used the Traidingview platform data from BINANCE, BITSTAMP and CRYPTOCAP exchanges. Considering the example of the analysis of the medium-term agreement with patterns and indicators of the BTC instrument, the most likely movement of the asset price is calculated in several stages. In the first stage, the classification of analysis tools and the possibility of applying several of them were investigated. The second stage involved analyzing the difference and risk of using different time frames for investment and finding rational ways of applying the available information to analyze the subsequent deal. In the third stage, a comparative analysis of the transaction with the BTC instrument was carried out, and the likely movement of the cryptocurrency price was determined. Based on the research, the only possible scenario for the behavior of the BTC instrument has been developed, namely: a drop in price and accumulation in the further bearish market. It is substantiated that the best option for analysis is the collection of all available information from the chart and its further analytical summation to obtain the most likely trend of the instrument's movement, as well as the analysis of the speculative value of the deal. The considered approaches to the technical analysis of the Bitcoin cycle create a scientifically based practical tool for Internet trading.

The Impact of Seasonality of Agricultural Production on Product Prices in Romania

"This paper aims to determine the possible impact of the seasonality of agricultural production on the prices of these products. Three main products were analysed, the majority of which are wheat, maize and sunflower production. With the help of national databases, product prices were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, as well as statistically, over the last 5 years by calendar month. A series of researches have been carried out on the data, such as: analysing the dynamics of both annual and monthly prices, as well as determining the correlations between the price level for these products and the calendar month to which these prices refer. Following this analysis, the third-degree polynomial regression equations were determined, showing that product prices follow a sinuous trend, with high prices in the first part of the year, when supply is running out, then, during the harvesting period, there is a drop in price, given the sudden increase in supply on the market, and in the last months of the calendar year, the highest prices are recorded, given the additional cost of storing production following the harvesting campaign. "

POSA211 Are Orphan Drugs in France Priced According to International Prices and Which Factors Could Influence the Negotiated Prices?

The orphan drug status in the European Union aims to promote investment by creating incentives. The primary objective of this analysis is to compare the prices of orphan drugs in France to that of four other European countries: Germany (post-amnog), Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. 17 orphan drugs priced in France between January 2016 and May 2021 were selected. Only products reimbursed first in an orphan indication and with public prices available were included. Daily treatment costs, first price publication date and price evolution in each country were collected. A one-to-one analysis was conducted to account for drugs not available in a country. Out of the 17 products, 11 (65%) had their lowest price in France. The mean daily treatment cost in France was significantly lower than in the UK (-20,73%; P-value = 0.0123), Italy (-18,57%; P-value = 0.0109) and Spain (-15,98%; P-value = 0.0288). The difference with Germany (+4,5%) was not statistically significant (P-value = 0.579). A trend appeared when observing the launch sequence of countries: the UK usually obtained a price first followed by other countries with a lower published price. The drop in price compared to the UK was substantial for Germany and France. In a linear regression model, the two best factors that explained the treatment cost were the population size and level of Added Medical Value (adjusted R2 = 0,7305; P-value < 0.001). These findings suggest that France grants a lower listed price than its reference countries for orphan drugs. Pricing decisions seem primarily based on the number of people to treat. The new 2021 framework agreement with the CEPS could change this. Indeed, orphan drugs will access European prices with an AMV level of IV. This status should guarantee a price at least equal to the lowest price in the four countries considered.