The Future of Biosimilars

Biosimilars are to Biologic products what generic drugs are to chemical products, a more affordable solution to the increasing drug pricing without sacrificing the quality of the treatment.There is much debate in the health care industry as to whether Biosimilars will deliver on the same success achieved by the generic products, which can amount to up to 80% in some cases.   It is my view though that Biosimilars provide a viable path to cost reduction, quality improvement and affordable accessibility to medication.  In fact, the introduction of lower costs Biologics as intended by the Biosimilar market will force competition within the therapeutics treatment market that will both exertpricing pressure as well as inspire innovation in the entire ecosystem.

The impact of authoritarian systems on the rise of transnational Islamist movements: Egypt, Saudi Arabia & the path to Al Qaeda

The events of September 11, 2001 have had a profound impact on the world we live in today. Not only have they changed the perception of rights and freedoms in both the developed and developing worlds, but these events brought violent political Islamist movements from the fringes of international politics to the forefront of world politics. Suddenly movements that were once seen as an issue for the Muslim world became a concern for countries worldwide as they struggled to understand the causes behind the rise of Islamist violence and figure out ways to address it. By and large, Islamist movements, violent and non-violent, find roots in the Arab world. The authoritarian nature of these systems, which prioritizes stability of the system and the ability of regimes to remain in power over inclusion of the public and various opposition groups, have often dealt with these movements through attempts of cooption into the system or isolation, which ranges from preventing them from participating in the legitimate system to full repression through incarceration and torture. It is largely due to isolation by these systems that many Islamist movements have not only turned to violence but adopted transnational modes of operation whereby a movement based in one country will carry out violent activities in a second to bring about change in a third. This study trances the dealings of the Egyptian and Saudi Arabian governments with their respective Islamist movements with particular emphasis on tactics of cooption and isolation adopted by these governments. It also argues that these tactics played a fundamental role in driving these movements to alter their mode of operation from limiting their activities within the confines of the political system of individual countries to adopting global jihad against the states that help maintain these authoritarian systems in place. The end result Al Qaeda is hoping to achieve is the recreation of the Islamic Ummah, through the declaration of global jihad. Based on the study, a series of actions are recommended for several players including political analysts, the media, and political players both on the international and regional levels. These actions include the need for expanding authoritarian political theory to allow for the analysis of these new movements and to predict their future activities. Efforts need to be made to distinguish between Islam as a religion and political movements derived from it. There is also a need for limiting the demonization of Islam by the media in order to reduce the feeling that the religion is under attack, which would reduce the attraction of radical ideologies to young Muslims

Impact of Lavandula officinalis, inert dusts and their formulations on Sitophilus oryzae

The volatile oil (Lavandula officinalis L.) and the inorganic compounds (inert dusts), aluminum oxide, kaolin and silicon dioxide were screened individually and in formulations against the rice weevil, Sitophilus oryzae. Aluminum oxide was the most potent with LC50 value of 0.65 mg/cm2, followed by silicon dioxide with LC50 value of 0.96 mg/cm2, while, kaolin gave LC50 value of 9.29 mg/cm2. The cumulative mortality (0-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150-200, 200-250, 250-300 days) responses at exposure times of L. officinalis and the inert dusts as well as the inert dust formulations at LC50 concentrations against S. oryzae were investigated. Moreover, the number of the offspring after 50 days of each lifetime period was developed. L. officinalis had a short duration of toxicity, as the efficiency continued only for 2 days from exposure to the compound. Silicon dioxide alone or in formulation was the most powerful, it gave full control of S. oryzae adults after 7 days at four (0-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150-200 days) and five (0-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150-200, 200-250 days) lifetime periods, respectively, in the same trend, silicon dioxide alone or in formulation possessed 100% reduction of the offspring at five life time periods. Moreover, aluminum oxide alone or in formulation gave full control of the insect after 7 days of exposure until three lifetime periods of the compound. Likewise, the compound alone or in formulation, possessed 100% reduction of the offspring at four lifetime periods. The formulations of aluminum oxide and silicon dioxide were more efficient than the compounds treated alone, where the effectiveness increased nearly two times, after 2 days from exposure at first 50 days lifetime period. Likewise, kaolin formulation was more effective than kaolin alone in the same lifetime period

The Behavior and Choices of Serial Bidders in M&A Transactions: A Prospect Theory Approach

This paper investigates the impact of previous losses incurred by U.S serial bidders on their M&A strategic choices and premiums paid to acquire targets. The Hubris and Overconfidence theories suggest that managers tend to overpay as a result of exaggerating their ability to extract value and manage post-acquisition integration process between the acquiring firm and its target. Managerial overconfidence, which is signaled by conducting several acquisitions within a short time period or by other manager-specific investment attributes, has been shown to contribute to increasing premiums in M&A transactions and subsequent poor post-acquisition performance. Experimental findings in the area of psychology over the past three decades introduced the notion that economic agents experience utility resulting from changes in wealth (gains and losses) relative to a reference point rather than the level of total wealth and that losses loom larger than gains. The Prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) suggests that decision makers tend to be more aggressive (risk taking) after a loss in order to recover their losses and more risk averse after gains. The Quasi-Hedonic hypothesis (Thaler & Johnson, 1990) indicates that decision makers will become more risk taking after repeated gains ( House Money Effect ) but tend to be more risk averse after losses to avoid further pain. However, decision makers tend to be more risk taking after losses if there is a chance for breaking even. Using a sample of 16,582 M&A transactions by 3,512 U.S public bidders involved in at least two acquisition attempts over the 1990-2005 period, this study introduces several loss proxies based on corporate, market, industry and managerial compensation factors. Several empirical tests are conducted in this study to control for concurrent decisions taken by managers, endogeneity effects in explaining premiums, alternate model specifications, industry factors, time period effects as well as robustness for managerial overconfidence and entrenchment. The results are consistent across all sub-periods, however, the significance of M&A success history variables diminish over the 2001-2005 period. I present evidence that bidders suffering from earlier losses in terms of market, industry and compensation factors tend to be more aggressive in their target choices (i.e. choosing private and/or unrelated targets) and tend to overpay. Corporate loss events/shocks, such as failure to conclude an earlier merger deal, tend to motivate managers to make safer bets in terms of choosing public targets operating in related industries, however, still tend to overpay for targets. As the level of stock ownership of the bidder\u27s management/executive team increases, managers tend to respond to corporate failure events/shocks in a similar fashion as other loss proxies. The results presented are generally robust to overconfidence, insider ownership, sub-periods and industry wide factors. The results are also robust to the compensation structure of the management team and target-bidder relative size. In addition, the results presented in this study support the agency theory implications in regards to the bidder\u27s target choices (i.e., related/unrelated and private/public targets) and the market-driven/mispricing theory in regards to partially explaining premiums paid by bidders to acquire their prospective targets. The results presented provide support to the prospect theory propositions that losses experienced by economic agents induce an aggressive or risk taking behavior in subsequent bets by pursuing non-public and/or unrelated targets and offering higher premiums