Searching for Innovations ? The Technological Determinants of Acquisitions in the Pharmaceutical Industry

This article analyzes the individual determinants of acquisition activity and target choices in the pharmaceutical industry over the period 1978-2002. The "innovation gap" hypothesis states that acquiring firms lack promising drug compounds and acquire firms with more promising drug prospects. A duration model implemented over a panel of more than 400 firms relates the probabilities of being an purchaser or a target to financial, R&D ant patent data to investigate this explanation more deeply. Results show that purchasers are firms with a lower Tobin's Q and decreasing sales, which could indicate that acquisitions are used to compensate for low internal growth prospects. Firms with a higher proportion of radical patents in their portfolio, especially in pharmaceutical and biothechnological patent classes, face a higher probability of being targeted, indicating that acquiring firms are indeed searching for innovative competencies. However, acquiring firms also present a significant absorptive capacity : their R&D investment increases in the year preceding the operation and their patent stock is larger and more diversified than for non-acquiring firms. Finally, we observe that over the last ten years of the sample period, firms have paid a greater attention to the size of the target's portfolio.M&A, pharmaceutical, innovations, patent citations.

Persistence of innovation, technological change and quality-adjusted patents in the US Pharmaceutical industry

URL des Cahiers : https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/CAHIERS-MSECahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques 2006.29 - ISSN 1624-0340This paper analyzes American pharmaceutical firms' persistence in innovating prior to the wave of mergers and acquisitions that accompanied the "Biotech revolution". We evaluate the impact of past innovative activity on firms' innovation propensities using a non-linear GMM estimator for exponential models that allows for predetermined regressors and linear feedback. We find that innovative activity at the firm level depends strongly on the technological importance of past innovations. In particular, breakthroughs depend largely on past innovations' scope, and this effect is likely to deter further pioneering behaviors rather than strengthen incentives to invest on non cumulative R&D. The results also shed light on the importance of small firms for the technological change in pharmaceuticals, and suggest that large firms may persist in using patents strategically to retain sales.Ce papier analyse la persistance à innover des laboratoires pharmaceutiques Américains, antérieurement à la vague de fusions et acquisitions qui accompagna la «révolution des Biotechnologies». Nous évaluons l'impact de l'activité passée d'innovation sur la propension courante à innover via des GMM non linéaires appliqués aux modèles de comptage et qui tolèrent des régresseurs prédéterminés avec des rétroactions linéaires. Nous trouvons que l'activité d'innovation au niveau de la firme dépend fortement de la portée de son passé inventif. Plus particulièrement, les découvertes radicales dépendent fortement de la qualité des innovations passées de la firme et cet effet semble la détourner de comportement pionniers plutôt que l'inciter à poursuivre une recherche non cumulative. Les résultats montrent aussi que le niveau de l'activité et le pouvoir de marché des firmes sont négativement corrélés avec l'importance technologique des innovations faites et ne sont positivement corrélé qu'avec les dépôts brevets simples. Les petites firmes apparaissent alors être la principale source du changement technologique tandis que les firmes plus importantes semblent avoir moins d'influence et pourraient donc utiliser le brevet à des fins plus stratégiques

Learning vocal tract variables with multi-task kernels

International audienceThe problem of acoustic-to-articulatory speech inversion continues to be a challenging research problem which sig- nificantly impacts automatic speech recognition robustness and accuracy. This paper presents a multi-task kernel based method aimed at learning Vocal Tract (VT) variables from the Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs). Unlike usual speech inversion techniques based on individual esti- mation of each tract variable, the key idea here is to consider all the target variables simultaneously to take advantage of the relationships among them and then improve learning per- formance. The proposed method is evaluated using synthetic speech dataset and corresponding tract variables created by the TAsk Dynamics Application (TADA) model and com- pared to the hierarchical ε-SVR speech inversion technique

Reception State Estimation of GNSS satellites in urban environment using particle filtering

International audienceThe reception state of a satellite is an unavailable information for Global Navigation Satellite System receivers. His knowledge or estimation can be used to evaluate the pseudorange. This article deals with the problem using three reception states: direct reception, alternate reception and blocked situation. This parameter, estimated using a Dirichlet distribution, is included in a particle filtering algorithm to improve the GNSS position in urban area. The algorithm takes into account two observation noise models depending on the reception of each satellite. Gaussian probability distribution is used with a direct path whereas a Gaussian mixture model is used in the alternate case

Considering security and quality of service in SLS to improve policy-based management of multimedia services

This paper proposes to improve policy-based management by integrating security parameters into the Service Level Specification (SLS). Integrating those parameters in the QoS part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) specification is of particular importance for multimedia services requiring security since QoS is negotiated when the multimedia service is deployed. Security mechanisms need to be negotiated at that time when sensible multimedia information is exchanged. In this paper we show that including security parameters in SLA specification improves the negotiation and deployment of security and QoS policies for multimedia services. The parameters this paper proposes to integrate have the advantage to be understandable by end-users and service providers. © 2007 IEEE

Time Allocation of a Set of Radars in a Multitarget Environment

International audienceThe question tackled here is the time allocation of radars in a multitarget environment. At a given time radars can only observe a limited part of the space; it is therefore necessary to move their axis with respect to time, in order to be able to explore the overall space facing them. Such sensors are used to detect, to locate and to identify targets which are in their surrounding aerial space. In this paper we focus on the detection schema when several targets need to be detected by a set of delocalized radars. This work is based on the modelling of the radar detection performances in terms of probability of detection and on the optimization of a criterion based on detection probabilities. This optimization leads to the derivation of allocation strategies and is made for several contexts and several hypotheses about the targets locations

Radar Optimal Times Detection Allocation in Multitarget Environment

International audienceThis paper deals with the problem of the management of Electronically Steered Antenna (ESA) in multitarget environments. Radars are used to detect, locate and identify targets. In this paper we focus on the detection of several aerial targets in a fixed given time. The difficulty of such detection lies in the fact that targets may be located anywhere in the space, but radars can only observe a limited part of it at a time. As a result, it is necessary to change their axis position over time. This paper describes the main steps to derive an optimal radar management in this context: the modeling of the radar, the determination of a criterion based on the target detection probability and the temporal optimization process leading to sensor management strategy. An optimization solution is presented for several contexts and several hypotheses about prior knowledge concerning the targets' locations. First, we propose a method for the optimization of the radar detection probability in a single target environment. It consists in the decomposition of the detection step into an optimal number of independent elementary detections. Then, in a multitarget context with deterministic prior knowledge, we present an optimal time allocation method which is based on the results of non linear programming. Finally, in a multitarget context with probabilistic prior knowledge, results in Search Theory are used to determine an optimal temporal allocation

Optimal Policies Search for Sensor Management : Application to the AESA Radar

This report introduces a new approach to solve sensor management problems. Classically sensor management problems are formalized as Partially-Observed Markov Decision Process (POMPD). Our original approach consists in deriving the optimal parameterized policy based on stochastic gradient estimation. Two differents techniques nammed Infinitesimal Approximation (IPA) and Likelihood Ratio (LR) can be used to adress such a problem. This report discusses how these methods can be used for gradient estimation in the context of sensor management . The effectiveness of this general framework is illustrated by the managing of an Active Electronically Scanned Array Radar (AESA Radar)

Improving the SLA-based management of QoS for secure multimedia services

This paper proposes to integrate security parameters into the Service Level Specification (SLS) template proposed in the Tequila project to improve SLA-based management of QoS [8], [21]. Integrating those parameters in the QoS part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) specification is essential in particular for secure multimedia services since the QoS is negotiated when the multimedia service is deployed. Security mechanisms need to be negotiated at deployment time when sensible multimedia information is exchanged. In this paper we show that including security parameters in the SLA specification improves the SLA-based management of QoS and therefore the negotiation, deployment and use of the secure multimedia service. The parameters this paper proposes to integrate have the advantage to be understandable by both the end-users and service providers. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2005