Digital finance and regional green innovation: the perspective of environmental regulation.

The relationship between digital finance and regional green innovation has been partially confirmed, yet the role of environmental regulation in it remains unexplored. Therefore, this paper examines the impact of digital finance on regional green innovation and tests the moderating role of environmental regulation using Chinese city-level data from 2011 to 2019 as a research sample. The results show that digital finance can significantly promote regional green innovation by alleviating regional financing constraints and increasing regional R&D investment. Besides, digital finance has apparent regional difference effects (the contribution of digital finance to regional green innovation is greater in eastern China than in western China, and the development of digital finance in neighbouring regions has a negative transmission effect on local green innovation). Finally, environmental regulation positively moderates the relationship between digital finance and regional green innovation. This paper explores the relationship between digital finance and regional green innovation from the perspective of environmental regulation, providing empirical evidence to promote regional green innovation.

Can the dual-rating regulation improve the rating quality of Chinese corporate bonds?

We developed a dual-reputational rating shopping model to introduce public and institutional reputations. Investor's and regulator's penalty rates are described as public and institutional reputations, respectively. We achieved the available conditions of single-rating and dual-rating regulations to prevent rating inflation in this model. To examine the regulatory effects of different types of regulations on Chinese corporate bond ratings, we utilize panel ordered logit models. Theoretical analysis and empirical tests show that, when the reputation effect is low, the single-rating regulation is better at improving rating quality, and when the reputation effect is high, the dual-rating regulation induces rating agencies to provide more accurate ratings. Compared to the regulatory effects of the single-rating and the multi-rating regulations, the dual-rating regulation most effectively improves the rating quality of corporate bonds and prevents rating inflation.

The functions of securities law: An expert survey of legislative intent in Poland.

Under the conventional view, securities law is intended to protect ordinary (retail) investors. However, some scholars from the school of Law & Economics (L&E), guided by considerations of economic efficiency, claim instead that the principal function of securities law is to reduce transaction costs and risk to professionals. This paper examines those claims empirically. Our research design blends content analysis methods with expert survey techniques to arrive at numerical assessments of determinants of Polish securities law. We find that the L&E view is supported by our data very weakly, only insofar as consumer protection is not the main driver of securities law. The veracity of this claim appears to be time-dependent. We do not find sufficient support for the main components of the L&E view, i.e., that securities law is meant to reduce transaction costs and risk to professionals. However, our data does not refute the L&E hypotheses, and, therefore, we consider them to be an open question. We phrase our conclusions cautiously because of the relatively small number of experts surveyed and of statutory sources of securities law in Poland.

The effect of environmental regulations on innovation in heavy-polluting and resource-based enterprises: Quasi-natural experimental evidence from China.

Environmental protection regulations adopted by governments affect the microeconomic behavior of enterprises. The Chinese government began piloting the outgoing leading officials' accountability audit of natural resources assets (OANRA) in some regions in 2014. Based on this quasi-natural experimental setting, this paper chose heavy-polluting and resource-based enterprises in pilot regions of China from 2011 to 2016 as examples for studying the impact of the OANRA on enterprise innovation and further examines the role of government subsidies in this process. The study finds that the OANRA has no significant impact on enterprise innovation. However, with support from government subsidies, the OANRA dramatically accelerates enterprise innovation investment. The results are still seen after applying propensity matching analysis (PSM), balancing panel data and deleting special provinces. Further analysis shows that this effect is more obvious among small-scale, state-owned enterprises that are located in areas with high degrees of marketization and high bank credit constraints. This study advances the research of the OANRA's effects on the microeconomic behavior of enterprises. Moreover, the adjustment effect of government subsidies also provides great reference value to making rational use of policy to cooperate with the OANRA.

Analyzing the impact of trade and investment agreements on pharmaceutical policy: provisions, pathways and potential impacts.

BACKGROUND: Trade and investment agreements negotiated after the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) have included increasingly elevated protection of intellectual property rights along with an expanding array of rules impacting many aspects of pharmaceutical policy. Despite the large body of literature on intellectual property and access to affordable medicines, the ways in which other provisions in trade agreements can affect pharmaceutical policy and, in turn, access to medicines have been little studied. There is a need for an analytical framework covering the full range of provisions, pathways, and potential impacts, on which to base future health and human rights impact assessment and research. A framework exploring the ways in which trade and investment agreements may affect pharmaceutical policy was developed, based on an analysis of four recently negotiated regional trade agreements. First a set of core pharmaceutical policy objectives based on international consensus was identified. A systematic comparative analysis of the publicly available legal texts of the four agreements was undertaken, and the potential impacts of the provisions in these agreements on the core pharmaceutical policy objectives were traced through an analysis of possible pathways. RESULTS: An analytical framework is presented, linking ten types of provisions in the four trade agreements to potential impacts on four core pharmaceutical policy objectives (access and affordability; safety, efficacy, and quality; rational use of medicines; and local production capacity and health security) via various pathways. CONCLUSIONS: The analytical framework highlights provisions in trade and investment agreements that need to be examined, pathways that should be explored, and potential impacts that should be taken into consideration with respect to pharmaceutical policy. This may serve as a useful checklist or template for health and human rights impact assessments and research on the implications of trade agreements for pharmaceuticals.

USMCA (NAFTA 2.0): tightening the constraints on the right to regulate for public health.

BACKGROUND: In late 2018 the United States, Canada, and Mexico signed a new trade agreement (most commonly referred to by its US-centric acronym, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA) to replace the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The new agreement is the first major trade treaty negotiated under the shadow of the Trump Administration's unilateral imposition of tariffs to pressure other countries to accept provisions more favourable to protectionist US economic interests. Although not yet ratified, the agreement is widely seen as indicative of how the US will engage in future international trade negotiations. METHODS: Drawing from methods used in earlier health impact assessments of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, we undertook a detailed analysis of USMCA chapters that have direct or indirect implications for health. We began with an initial reading of the entire agreement, followed by multiple line-by-line readings of key chapters. Secondary sources and inter-rater (comparative) analyses by the four authors were used to ensure rigour in our assessments. RESULTS: The USMCA expands intellectual property rights and regulatory constraints that will lead to increased drug costs, particularly in Canada and Mexico. It opens up markets in both Canada and Mexico for US food exports without reducing the subsidies the US provides to its own producers, and introduces a number of new regulatory reforms that weaken public health oversight of food safety. It reduces regulatory policy space through new provisions on 'technical barriers to trade' and requirements for greater regulatory coherence and harmonization across the three countries. It puts some limitations on contentious investor-state dispute provisions between the US and Mexico, provisions often used to challenge or chill health and environmental measures, and eliminates them completely in disputes between the US and Canada; but it allows for new 'legacy claims' for 3 years after the agreement enters into force. Its labour and environmental chapters contain a few improvements but overall do little to ensure either workers' rights or environmental protection. CONCLUSION: Rather than enhancing public health protection the USMCA places new, extended, and enforceable obligations on public regulators that increase the power (voice) of corporate (investor) interests during the development of new regulations. It is not a health-enhancing template for future trade agreements that governments should emulate.

Environmental Regulation, Two-Way Foreign Direct Investment, and Green Innovation Efficiency in China's Manufacturing Industry.

This paper adopts 2009 to 2015 panel data from 27 manufacturing industries in China. A Super-SBM model is used to measure the green innovation efficiency (GIE) of China's manufacturing industry. A panel data model is then built to systematically examine the impact of environmental regulation (ER) and two-way foreign direct investment (FDI) on the GIE of China's manufacturing industry under a unified analysis framework. The results are as follows: (1) the overall level of the green innovation efficiency in China's manufacturing is low, and there is still great potential for improvement. Considering industry heterogeneity, the green innovation efficiency of patent-intensive manufacturing is significantly higher than that of non-patent-intensive manufacturing; (2) in terms of the whole manufacturing industry, ER and the interaction between ER and outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) have significantly negative effects on GIE, OFDI has significantly positive effects on GIE. (3) when considering industry heterogeneity, for patent-intensive manufacturing, ER and the interaction between ER and inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) have significantly negative effects on GIE, while IFDI has significantly positive effect on GIE. For non-patent-intensive manufacturing, ER and the interaction between ER and OFDI have significantly negative effects on GIE, while IFDI and the interaction between ER and IFDI have significantly positive effects on GIE.

Investing for Health: Potential Mechanisms for the Investment Community to Contribute to Obesity Prevention and Improved Nutrition.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: There is a critical need for corporations to be part of the solutions to major societal issues, such as obesity. Investment decisions can have a substantial impact on both corporate practices and population health. This paper aimed to explore potential mechanisms for incorporating obesity and related nutrition considerations into responsible investment (RI) approaches. RECENT FINDINGS: We found that there are a number of available strategies for the investment community to incorporate obesity considerations into their decisions. However, despite some recent efforts to improve company disclosure in the area and the emergence of new tools for assessing food company nutrition policies, the inclusion of obesity and related nutrition considerations as part of RI is currently extremely limited. There appears to be substantial scope to apply approaches already in widespread use for other RI considerations to the area of obesity. Ways in which to apply measurement frameworks across different markets and sectors need to be explored.

The inherent risks associated with newly traded biopharmaceutical firms.

Here, we provide a comprehensive study related to the risks of all biopharmaceutical firms going public in the USA between 1996 and 2015. We found 355 firms that met our requirements for being in the sector that focuses on creating drugs for humans. Collectively, these firms spent approximately US$86.9 billion on research and development (R&D) during this time. They also lost approximately US$69.3 billion in combined net income. We also examine the delisting of these firms from a public market, their number of collaborators at the initial public offering (IPO), and estimate the percentage ownership by other biopharmaceutical firms at the IPO.

International trade and investment law: a new framework for public health and the common good.

BACKGROUND: International trade and investment agreements can have positive outcomes, but also have negative consequences that affect global health and influence fundamental health determinants: poverty, inequality and the environment. This article proposes principles and strategies for designing future international law to attain health and common good objectives. ARGUMENT: Basic principles are needed for international trade and investment agreements that are consistent with the common good, public health, and human rights. These principles should reflect the importance of reducing inequalities, along with social and environmental sustainability. Economic growth should be recognised as a means to common good objectives, rather than an end in itself. Our favoured approach is both radical and comprehensive: we describe what this approach would include and outline the strategies for its implementation, the processes and capacity building necessary for its achievement, and related governance and corporate issues. The comprehensive approach includes significant changes to current models for trade and investment agreements, in particular (i) health, social and environmental objectives would be recognised as legitimate in their own right and implemented accordingly; (ii) changes to dispute-resolution processes, both state-to-state and investor-state; (iii) greater deference to international legal frameworks for health, environmental protection, and human rights; (iv) greater coherence across the international law framework; (v) limitations on investor privileges, and (vi) enforceable corporate responsibilities for contributing to health, environmental, human rights and other common good objectives. We also identify some limited changes that could be considered as an alternative to the proposed comprehensive approach. Future research is needed to develop a range of model treaties, and on the means by which such treaties and reforms might be achieved. Such research would focus also on complementary institutional reforms relevant to the United Nations and other international agencies. Advocacy by a range of communities is needed for effective change. Reform will require informed debate, determined engagement with decision-makers and stakeholders, and some agreement across health, social and environmental sectors on alternatives. CONCLUSIONS: Current frameworks of international law that govern trade and economic development need radical change, in relation to treaty processes, content, and contexts, to better attain public health objectives.

Legal Implications of Physician Investment and Ownership in Health Care Enterprises.

This article presents a case in which a neurology group practice is considering investing in an imaging center that is owned by nonphysician investors with the aim of referring patients to this imaging center. The article reviews some important legal pitfalls in federal law that physicians must be aware of when considering such an investment and focuses on the general outlines of and exceptions to the Stark Law and the Federal Anti-Kickback Statute.

A real options approach to biotechnology investment policy-the case of developing a Campylobacter vaccine to poultry.

The aim of the article is to identify and analyse public-private incentives for the development and marketing of new animal vaccines within a real options methodological framework, and to investigate how real options methodology can be utilized to support economic incentives for vaccine development in a cost-effective way. The development of a vaccine against Campylobacter jejuni in poultry is applied as a case study. Employing the real options methodology, the net present value of the vaccine R&D project becomes larger than a purely probabilistic expected present value throughout the different stages of the project - and the net present value becomes larger, when more types of real options are taken into consideration. The insight from the real options analysis reveals opportunities for new policies to promote the development of animal vaccines. One such approach might be to develop schemes combining stage-by-stage optimized subsidies in the individual development stages, with proper account taken of investors'/developers' economic incentives to proceed, sell or cancel the project in the respective stages. Another way of using the real options approach to support the development of desirable animal vaccines could be to issue put options for the vaccine candidate, enabling vaccine developers to hedge against the economic risk from market volatility.