Revision of the United Nations Charter: A Study of Various Approaches

Although the United Nations Charter has survived rigorous tests of practice and application, all will doubtless agree that it should now undergo careful review if not thorough revision. Review in moderate terms is a matter of continuous international process, the Charter\u27s structures and rules being regularly applied to the situations of everyday international life. As the necessary precondition to revision, however, the Charter will be subjected to a more deliberate, systematic, and searching review before concrete proposals for revision reach a competent international authority. Thus review is at once exploratory and promising. But revision is much more

A Non-Linear Macroeconomic Term Structure Model

This model uses three implicit states (Core CPI, the unemployment rate, and the quarterly growth rate of non-farm payrolls) which follow a multivariate continuous-time Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process. The instantaneous risk-free rate (Fed Funds) is set using a policy rule (following Black (1995)) which is affine in the implicit states with a lower bound at one basis point. The policy rule is fixed throughout the sample period from November, 1985 through March, 2013. While the policy rule is fixed throughout the sample, the economy responds differently when Fed Funds are stuck at their minimum (the Zero Period) than it does when the Fed can use Fed Funds more effectively to influence the economy (the Normal Period). The implicit state OU processes have different coefficients, both physical and risk neutral, in the two response periods. While market participants may know the implicit states, an econometrician must estimate from them market and macroeconomic data. I estimate the implicit states and the OU processes parameters by maximizing the joint conditional likelihood that the implicit states are close to the government states estimates; that the model accurately determines the yield curve; and that the actual one-month returns are forecasted by the model. The data are monthly estimates of the state variables published by the government, month-end zero coupon yield curves with maturities from 2 to 30 years published by the Fed, and one month returns for the benchmark 2, 10, and 30 year Treasury zeros calculated from the month-end yield curves from November, 1985 through March, 2013. Over the entire sample the root mean square error (RMSE) in fitting yield curves is only 4.6 basis points. I find conditional yield curve responses to changes in the state variables, which are significantly different from the unconditional factors. The model is tested out-of-sample by fitting Treasury Inflation Protected Securities. I find ample profit opportunities

Questioning the Frequency and Wisdom of Compulsory Licensing for Pharmaceutical Patents

Many advocates for using compulsory licensing (“CL”) for pharmaceutical patents in developing countries like Thailand rest their case in part on the purported use of CL in the United States. In this paper we take issue with that proposition on several grounds. As a theoretical matter, we argue that the basic presumption in favor of voluntary licenses for IP should apply in the international arena, in addition to the domestic one. In the international context, voluntary licenses are of special importance because they strengthen the supply chain for distributing pharmaceuticals and ease the government enforcement of safety standards. Next, this paper analyzes several of the key illustrations of purported CL for drug patents in the United States and shows that the use of CL elsewhere deviates in material ways from the standard U.S. practices. These are the compulsory copyright licenses for music; the award of damages instead of injunctions after eBay v. MercExchange, and the use of compulsory licenses in antitrust settlements. Whatever the ultimate desirability of these American doctrines, none of them seeks to reduce the payment on licenses to the marginal cost of the licensed goods. Any need to help poor people gain access should not rely on CL, but instead should rely on tools precisely aimed at that purpose, including direct government purchases of patented drugs from their manufacturers at negotiated prices

Questioning the Frequency and Wisdom of Compulsory Licensing for Pharmaceutical Patents

Many advocates for using compulsory licensing (CL) for pharmaceutical patents in developing countries like Thailand rest their case in part on the purported use of CL in the United States. In this Article we take issue with that proposition on several grounds. As a textual matter, the commercially reasonable terms language in Article 31 of TRIPS, even when qualified by the Doha declaration, prevents any host nation from using whatever royalties it wants in its CL arrangements, especially those that are below marginal cost. As a theoretical matter, we argue that the basic presumption in favor of voluntary licenses for intellectual property (IP) should apply in the international arena, in addition to the domestic one. In the international context, voluntary licenses are of special importance because they strengthen the supply chain for distributing pharmaceuticals and ease the government enforcement of safety standards. Next, this Article analyzes several of the key illustrations of purported CL for drug patents in the United States and shows that the use of CL elsewhere deviates in material ways from the standard US practices. These are the compulsory copyright licenses for music, the limited statutory exemptions for pharmaceuticals and medical procedures, the award of damages instead of injunctions after eBay Inc v MercExchange, LLC, government takings, and the use of compulsory licenses in antitrust settlements. Whatever the ultimate desirability of these American doctrines, none of them seeks to reduce the payment on licenses to the marginal cost of the licensed goods. Any need to help poor people gain access to vital drugs should not rely on CL, but instead should rely on tools precisely aimed at that purpose, including direct government purchases of patented drugs from their manufacturers at negotiated prices

Questioning the Frequency and Wisdom of Compulsory Licensing for Pharmaceutical Patents

Many advocates for using compulsory licensing ( CL ) for pharmaceutical patents in developing countries like Thailand rest their case in part on the purported use of CL in the United States. In this paper we take issue with that proposition on several grounds. As a theoretical matter, we argue that the basic presumption in favor of voluntary licenses for IP should apply in the international arena, in addition to the domestic one. In the international context, voluntary licenses are of special importance because they strengthen the supply chain for distributing pharmaceuticals and ease the government enforcement of safety standards. Next, this paper analyzes several of the key illustrations of purported CL for drug patents in the United States and shows that the use of CL elsewhere deviates in material ways from the standard U.S. practices. These are the compulsory copyright licenses for music; the award of damages instead of injunctions after eBay v. MercExchange, and the use of compulsory licenses in antitrust settlements. Whatever the ultimate desirability of these American doctrines, none of them seeks to reduce the payment on licenses to the marginal cost of the licensed goods. Any need to help poor people gain access should not rely on CL, but instead should rely on tools precisely aimed at that purpose, including direct government purchases of patented drugs from their manufacturers at negotiated prices

A Positive Theory of Economic Growth and the Distribution of Income

This paper is a positive theory of the distribution of income and the growth rate of the economy. It builds on our earlier work (Meltzer and Richard, 1981) on the size of government. How does the distribution of income change as an economy grows? To answer this question we build a model of a labor economy in which consumers have diverse productivity. The government imposes a linear income tax which funds equal per capita redistribution. The tax rate is set in a sequence of single issue election in which the median productivity individual is decisive. Economic growth is the result of using a learning by doing technology, so higher taxes discourage labor causing the growth rate of the economy to fall. The distribution of productivity can widen due to an exogenous increase in technological specialization. This causes voters to raise the equilibrium tax rate and reduce growth. The distribution of pre-tax income widens. We calibrate the model using data from the U.S., U.K. and France. The results of the calibration show that the model is consistent with the facts about changes in income distribution over time in developed countries

Early Investigations and Recent Advances in Intraperitoneal Immunotherapy for Peritoneal Metastasis.

Peritoneal metastasis (PM) is an advanced stage malignancy largely refractory to modern therapy. Intraperitoneal (IP) immunotherapy offers a novel approach for the control of regional disease of the peritoneal cavity by breaking immune tolerance. These strategies include heightening T-cell response and vaccine induction of anti-cancer memory against tumor-associated antigens. Early investigations with chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T cells), vaccine-based therapies, dendritic cells (DCs) in combination with pro-inflammatory cytokines and natural killer cells (NKs), adoptive cell transfer, and immune checkpoint inhibitors represent significant advances in the treatment of PM. IP delivery of CAR-T cells has shown demonstrable suppression of tumors expressing carcinoembryonic antigen. This response was enhanced when IP injected CAR-T cells were combined with anti-PD-L1 or anti-Gr1. Similarly, CAR-T cells against folate receptor α expressing tumors improved T-cell tumor localization and survival when combined with CD137 co-stimulatory signaling. Moreover, IP immunotherapy with catumaxomab, a trifunctional antibody approved in Europe, targets epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) and has shown considerable promise with control of malignant ascites. Herein, we discuss immunologic approaches under investigation for treatment of PM