Games Parents and Adolescents Play: Risky Behaviors, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers

This paper examines reputation formation in intra-familial interactions. We consider parental reputation in a repeated two-stage game in which adolescents decide whether to give a teen birth or drop out of high school, and given adolescent decisions, the parent decides whether to house and support his children beyond age 18. Drawing on the work of Milgrom and Roberts (1982) and Kreps and Wilson (1982), we show that the parent has, under certain conditions, the incentive to penalize older children for their teenage risky behaviors in order to dissuade the younger children from the same risky behaviors. The model generates two empirical implications: the likelihood of teen risky behaviors and parental transfers to a child who engaged in teen risky behaviors will decrease with the number of remaining children at risk. We test these two implications, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort (NLSY79). Exploiting the availability of repeated observations on individual respondents and of observations on multiple siblings, we find evidence in favor of both predictions.

Information, Learning, and Drug Diffusion: the Case of Cox-2 Inhibitors

The recent withdrawal of Cox-2 Inhibitors has generated debate on the role of information in drug diffusion: can the market learn the efficacy of new drugs, or does it depend solely on manufacturer advertising and FDA updates? In this study, we use a novel data set to study the diffusion of three Cox-2 Inhibitors ? Celebrex, Vioxx and Bextra ? before the Vioxx withdrawal. Our study has two unique features: first, we observe each patient?s reported satisfaction after consuming a drug. This patient level data set, together with market level data on FDA updates, media coverage, academic articles, and pharmaceutical advertising, allows us to model individual prescription decisions. Second, we distinguish across-patient learning of a drug?s general efficacy from the within-patient learning of the match between a drug and a patient. Our results suggest that prescription choice is sensitive to many sources of information. At the beginning of 2001 and upon Bextra entry in January 2002, doctors held a strong prior belief about the efficacy of Celebrex, Vioxx, and Bextra. As a result, the learning from patient satisfaction is gradual and more concentrated on drug-patient match than on across-patient spillovers. News articles are weakly beneficial for Cox-2 drug sales, but academic articles appear to be detrimental. The impact of FDA updates is close to zero once we control for academic articles, which suggests that FDA updates follow academic articles and therefore deliver little new information to doctors. We find that drug advertising also influences the choice of a patient?s medication. A number of counterfactual experiments are carried out to quantify the influence of information on market shares.

Strategies for Controlled Placement of Nanoscale Building Blocks

The capability of placing individual nanoscale building blocks on exact substrate locations in a controlled manner is one of the key requirements to realize future electronic, optical, and magnetic devices and sensors that are composed of such blocks. This article reviews some important advances in the strategies for controlled placement of nanoscale building blocks. In particular, we will overview template assisted placement that utilizes physical, molecular, or electrostatic templates, DNA-programmed assembly, placement using dielectrophoresis, approaches for non-close-packed assembly of spherical particles, and recent development of focused placement schemes including electrostatic funneling, focused placement via molecular gradient patterns, electrodynamic focusing of charged aerosols, and others

DIRECT TO CONSUMER ADVERTISING AND PRESCRIPTION CHOICE

This paper examines the effect of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs on doctors' choice of drug brands. Using antihistamines as an example, we show that DTCA has little effect on the choice of brand despite the massive DTCA expenditure incurred in this class. In contrast, promotional activities directed toward physicians have larger and longer lasting effects. These results, together with the market-expanding results shown in Iizuka and Jin (2005), suggest that DTCA is effective in increasing the aggregate demand per therapeutic class but does not affect doctor choice of prescription within a class. Therefore, DTCA may be viewed as a public good for all drugs in the same class. Copyright 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd..

Direct to Consumer Advertising and Prescription Choice ∗

This paper examines the effect of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs on doctor choice of drug brands. Using antihistamines as an example, we show that DTCA has little effect on the choice of brand despite the massive DTCA expenditure incurred in this class. In contrast, promotional activities directed to physicians have a larger and long-lasting effects. These results, together with the market-expanding results shown in Iizuka and Jin (2005), suggest that DTCA is effective in increasing the aggregate demand per therapeutic class but does not affect doctor choice of prescription within a class. Therefore, DTCA may be viewed as a public good for all drugs in the same class.

Games Parents and Adolescents Play: Risky Behaviors, Parental Reputation, and Strategic Transfers

This paper examines reputation formation in intra-familial interactions. We consider parental reputation in a repeated two-stage game in which adolescents decide whether to give a teen birth or drop out of high school, and given adolescent decisions, the parent decides whether to house and support his children beyond age 18. Drawing on the work of Milgrom and Roberts (1982) and Kreps and Wilson (1982), we show that the parent has, under certain conditions, the incentive to penalize older children for their teenage risky behaviors in order to dissuade the younger children from the same risky behaviors. The model generates two empirical implications: the likelihood of teen risky behaviors and parental transfers to a child who engaged in teen risky behaviors will decrease with the number of remaining children at risk. We test these two implications, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort (NLSY79). Exploiting the availability of repeated observations on individual respondents and of observations on multiple siblings, we find evidence in favor of both predictions