Is It Possible to Have Cheaper Drugs and Preserve the Incentive to Innovate: Reforming the Drug Approval Process According to Market Principles

This paper argues that drugs are expensive not because of a lack of competition among research-based pharmaceutical companies, but because of a lack of competition in the drug approval process. Lack of competition in the drug approval process has led to exceedingly high drug development costs. High drug development costs combined with artificially low drug prices, obtained through price control legislation and legislation that eases the entry of generic products into the market, has caused lower levels of pharmaceutical research and development, innovation, and economic growth.Privatization, Competition, Monopoly, Innovation, Drugs, Generics, Pharmaceuticals

Albert Einstein's 1916 Review Article on General Relativity

The first comprehensive overview of the final version of the general theory of relativity was published by Einstein in 1916 after several expositions of preliminary versions and latest revisions of the theory in November 1915. A historical account of this review paper is given, of its prehistory, including a discussion of Einstein's collaboration with Marcel Grossmann, and of its immediate reception.Comment: 27 pages, 1 jpg imag

Einstein's Generation: The Origins of the Relativity Revolution

No abstract

Remarks on the Origin of Path Integration: Einstein and Feynman

I offer some historical comments about the origins of Feynman's path integral approach, as an alternative approach to standard quantum mechanics. Looking at the interaction between Einstein and Feynman, which was mediated by Feynman's thesis supervisor John Wheeler, it is argued that, contrary to what one might expect, the significance of the interaction between Einstein and Feynman pertained to a critique of classical field theory, rather than to a direct critique of quantum mechanics itself. Nevertheless, the critical perspective on classical field theory became a motivation and point of departure for Feynman's space-time approach to non-relativistic quantum mechanics.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of 'Path Integrals - New Trends and Perspectives,' Dresden, 23-28 September 200