PRISM :: Browsing by Author "Hollis, Aidan"

Browsing by Author "Hollis, Aidan"

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Open Access
An economic analysis of regulating reserves market in Alberta
(2003) Tepczynska, Malgorzata; Hollis, Aidan
Open Access
An empirical study of scale economies in the Chinese railway system
(2002) Wang, Huaixiang; Hollis, Aidan
Open Access
Attitudes, behaviours and barriers to public health measures for COVID-19: a survey to inform public health messaging
(2021-04-21) Lang, Raynell; Benham, Jamie L; Atabati, Omid; Hollis, Aidan; Tombe, Trevor; Shaffer, Blake; Burns, Katharina K; MacKean, Gail; Léveillé, Tova; McCormack, Brandi; Sheikh, Hasan; Fullerton, Madison M; Tang, Theresa; Boucher, Jean-Christophe; Constantinescu, Cora; Mourali, Mehdi; Manns, Braden J; Marshall, Deborah A; Hu, Jia; Oxoby, Robert J
Abstract Background Public support of public health measures including physical distancing, masking, staying home while sick, avoiding crowded indoor spaces and contact tracing/exposure notification applications remains critical for reducing spread of COVID-19. The aim of our work was to understand current behaviours and attitudes towards public health measures as well as barriers individuals face in following public health measures. We also sought to identify attitudes persons have regarding a COVID-19 vaccine and reasons why they may not accept a vaccine. Methods A cross-sectional online survey was conducted in August 2020, in Alberta, Canada in persons 18 years and older. This survey evaluated current behaviours, barriers and attitudes towards public health measures and a COVID-19 vaccine. Cluster analysis was used to identify key patterns that summarize data variations among observations. Results Of the 60 total respondents, the majority of persons were always or often physically distancing (73%), masking (65%) and staying home while sick (67%). Bars/pubs/lounges or nightclubs were visited rarely or never by 63% of respondents. Persons identified staying home while sick to provide the highest benefit (83%) in reducing spread of COVID-19. There were a large proportion of persons who had not downloaded or used a contact tracing/exposure notification app (77%) and who would not receive a COVID-19 vaccine when available (20%) or were unsure (12%). Reporting health authorities as most trusted sources of health information was associated with greater percentage of potential uptake of vaccine but not related to contact tracing app download and use. Individuals with lower concern of getting and spreading COVID-19 showed the least uptake of public health measures except for avoiding public places such as bars. Lower concern regarding COVID-19 was also associated with more negative responses to taking a potential COVID-19 vaccine. Conclusion These results suggest informational frames and themes focusing on individual risks, highlighting concern for COVID-19 and targeting improving trust for health authorities may be most effective in increasing public health measures. With the ultimate goal of preventing spread of COVID-19, understanding persons’ attitudes towards both public health measures and a COVID-19 vaccine remains critical to addressing barriers and implementing targeted interventions and messaging to improve uptake.
Open Access
Data Analytics in Competitive Electricity Markets to Uncover the Impact of Emerging Technologies
(2017) Zamanidehkordi, Payam; Zareipour, Hamid; Rakai, Logan; Karki, Rajesh; Far, Behrouz; Knight, Andrew; Nowicki, Edwin; Hollis, Aidan
The electrical power industry has entered a transition towards sustainable, reliable and clean solutions. It is a continuous revolution trending to a large-scale expansion of renewables in power systems. There have been, however, serious concerns over reliable and secure operation of power systems. Energy storage facilities are increasingly being used to help integrate renewable energy resources into the grid. While understanding the environmental benefits of these emerging technologies is straightforward, the economic impacts of their integration in a competitive market is more complicated. These emerging technologies are likely to have an economically-important effect on the dynamics of electricity prices. This is a concern to different sections of electricity markets including power suppliers, policy makers, and end users. This thesis focuses on applying data mining tools to competitive electricity markets in order to uncover the impact of emerging technologies such as wind power and storage systems on the dynamics of electricity prices. Data-driven approaches are developed to explore the impact on wholesale prices of individual wind farms and independently-operated large-scale energy storage systems. Additionally, this thesis proposes a data-driven methodology to determine a justified support scheme for upcoming wind farms by incorporating their estimated revenue and levelized cost of energy. Moreover, an operation-inspired electricity price prediction scheme is developed to improve the economic profit obtained from operation of storage facilities in competitive markets. Numerical simulations are provided for the electricity markets of Alberta and Ontario. The results prove the efficiency and accuracy of proposed methodologies in estimating the impact on wholesale prices of emerging technologies. In addition, the obtained results from both competitive markets indicate that the presented methodology in this thesis is able to estimate the revenue of an upcoming wind farm with reasonable accuracy, which successively determines the support scheme awarded to the project. Moreover, the performed analyses manifest the effectiveness of the proposed price prediction scheme in improving the economic performance of storage systems.
Open Access
Economic Analysis of Near-Patient Testing for C. difficile Implemented in a Large Hospital in Calgary, Canada
(2020-06-19) Sharma, Anuj; Hollis, Aidan; Lu, Mingshan; Walls, William David; Laliberté, Jean William P.
Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is the main source for onset of antibiotic-associated diarrhea in patients and is thus an important cause of morbidity and mortality in Canadian hospitals. CDI typically results from the augmented and needless use of potent broad-spectrum antibiotics. All patients suspected of CDI are put under mandatory pre-emptive contact precautions even before patients are tested for CDI. The contact precautions involve use of fresh gown and gloves for each entry into a patient room. Most patients with a suspected diagnosis of CDI ultimately test negative. The existing centralized testing takes about 24 hours for test result confirmation. Consequently, hospitals are burdened with unnecessary cost of putting such patients under contact precautions and patients who test positive face a delay in appropriate therapy initiation. There is a rapid test available for diagnosing CDI which gives results within a few hours, but it is more expensive than the centralized testing. This thesis offers an economic analysis of rapid testing for CDI in Calgary, Alberta. Existing literature on implementation of rapid testing lack accurate cost-benefit analysis. In my thesis, I have focused only on patients who test negative. The hypothesis is that for patients with a negative diagnosis, rapid testing may enable early removal from contact precautions for patients who do not have any other diseases which requires contact precautions, saving the hospital the cost of contact precautions. The analysis in this thesis suggests that by implementing rapid testing for diagnosing CDI, Foothills Medical Center in Calgary, Canada can save approximately $20,000 annually.
Open Access
Economics of innovation in the pharmaceutical industry
(2020-07-06) Moradpour Taleshi, Javad; Hollis, Aidan; Lu, Mingshan; Magesan, Arvind; Laliberté, Jean William P.; Devlin, Rose Anne
This thesis is a collection of three essays which investigate the economics of innovation in the healthcare industry. In Chapter 2 I use a global data set to measure the effect of health losses and average patient income on innovation in different therapeutic areas. I show that the average patient income is a strong predictor of the number of clinical trials, and I demonstrate how this can be used to identify diseases that are underfunded relative to their harm to human health. Chapter 3 presents a theoretical model of health markets with public health insurance. The model describes the operation of the cost-effectiveness threshold frequently employed by public insurers to decide which health products to cover. I show that having two different thresholds for products with and without patents can increase efficiency. Chapter 4 introduces a structural model of pharmaceutical innovation. Estimates from this model show that the net effect of a firm's innovation on their rivals' decision to innovate in the same therapeutic area is negative. The model demonstrates that previous firm-specific experience in a therapeutic area is a key factor in the decision to invest in that therapeutic area.
Open Access
Essays on Endogenous Behaviour in Antitrust Litigation
(2019-04-12) Ata, Michael Norman; Church, Jeffrey; Hollis, Aidan; Roberts, Joanne; Migrow, Dimitri; Landeo, Claudia M.
In this thesis, I formulate and assess the strategic interaction between a firm and competition authority (CA) as a game. Unlike prior models of litigation, I allow the CA to be non-committal over enforcement by allowing the aggressiveness of firm activity to influence its choice of policy, where aggressiveness is defined as an act that sets objective probabilities over consequences. By allowing non-commitment over policy enforcement, I focus on how an endogenous policy response to firm activity influences decisions made in equilibrium, and its subsequent impact on social welfare. In Chapter 1, I conduct a review of law, policy, and economics literature on the topic of antitrust litigation, and law and economics in general. I find the conventional method of modeling in law and economics and antitrust-specific settings imposes commitment over a government/legal authorities policy before agents decide whether to take a welfare benign (or legal) or harmful (illegal) action. I argue that because unilateral firm conduct has progressed to be evaluated under an effects-based standard, aggressiveness may influence the thoroughness of evidence presented in adjudication. In Chapter 2, I formalize the strategic interaction between a firm and CA as a game and assess their interaction. I find that conditional on firm aggressiveness, there are three general policy ranges that are viable for the CA to implement: forgoing investigation, investigation with minimal effort in adjudication, and investigation with non-minimal effort. I find all three policy ranges are viable in equilibrium. I further find a potential perverse effect may occur in equilibrium; increasing the CAs efficiency or resources in adjudication may decrease social welfare. The decrease is attributable to the CA and firm; increasing efficiency or resources in adjudication alters the CAs enforcement policy, which the firm responds to. The firms' optimal choice of aggressiveness may increase in response to either effect. In Chapter 3, I extend the model formulated in Chapter 2 to evaluate how a multiple firm environment affects firm aggressiveness and the CAs enforcement policy.
Open Access
Estimating the clinical cost of drug development for orphan versus non-orphan drugs
(2019-01-10) Jayasundara, Kavisha; Hollis, Aidan; Krahn, Murray; Mamdani, Muhammad; Hoch, Jeffrey S; Grootendorst, Paul
Abstract Background High orphan drug prices have gained the attention of payers and policy makers. These prices may reflect the need to recoup the cost of drug development from a small patient pool. However, estimates of the cost of orphan drug development are sparse. Methods Using publicly available data, we estimated the differences in trial characteristics and clinical development costs with 100 orphan and 100 non-orphan drugs. Results We found that the out-of-pocket clinical costs per approved orphan drug to be $166 million and $291 million (2013 USD) per non-orphan drug. The capitalized clinical costs per approved orphan drug and non-orphan drug were estimated to be $291 million and $412 million respectively. When focusing on new molecular entities only, we found that the capitalized clinical cost per approved orphan drug was half that of a non-orphan drug. Conclusions More discussion is needed to better align on which cost components should be included in research and development costs for pharmaceuticals.
Open Access
Google’s Antitrust Woes and Google Shopping
(2019-08-28) White, Adam Joseph; Church, Jeffrey R.; Hollis, Aidan; Migrow, Dimitri; McKenzie, Kenneth J.
In 2017, Google was fined 2.7 billion USD by the European Commission for its abuse of dominance when it promoted its Google Shopping service above rival comparison shopping services on Google’s results page. Comparison shopping services suffered from the conduct as they received less traffic as users selected Google’s prominently placed Google Shopping service. This thesis will question whether Google’s conduct was anticompetitive, or were they incorrectly fined for pro-competitive conduct? Additionally, Canada’s Competition Bureau and the United States’ Federal Trade Commission exonerated Google for the same activity in past years, so why would these agencies with similar goals and legislation come to different opinions regarding Google’s conduct? This thesis concludes that Google’s conduct is pro-competitive and that the United States and Canada were correct in their decision to cease the investigation. This thesis also identifies three reasons why the European Commission could have legally justified fining Google, even if it was not economically justified. The analysis conducted in this thesis could give guidance to other similar cases which Google is being investigated for, such as the investigation into Google Flights and Google Maps.
Open Access
Implications of Implementing an Efficient Residential Transmission and Distribution Tariff and an Efficient Reimbursement Price for Excess Rooftop Solar Production in Alberta
(2018-05-23) Renborg, Lars Georg; Church, Jeffrey R.; Hollis, Aidan; Walls, W. David
Rooftop solar is forecast to grow in Alberta to 5878 MW of installed capacity by 2030. The efficient level of rooftop solar installed by 2030 is 3634 MW. The additional 2244 MW of solar by 2030 is caused by incorrect residential transmission tariffs and incorrect reimbursement prices for excess solar production. The efficient level of rooftop solar (3634 MW by 2030) minimizes electricity costs for Albertans. The additional MW of solar will cost Albertans between 214 and 230 million dollars (2017 Canadian dollars) over the next thirteen years in additional electricity costs compared to if the same electricity had been produced from the grid. Updating the transmission tariff and the reimbursement price for excess solar production will save Albertans between 214 and 230 million dollars in electricity costs over the next thirteen years.
Open Access
Negotiated settlements and intergenerational equity in the pipeline service market: borrowing from Pete jr. to pay Paul sr.
(2010) Fellows, Garret Kent; Hollis, Aidan; Auld, M. Christopher
The movement from traditional regulatory hearings to negotiated settlements represents both a departure from cost of service regulation and a relaxation of regulatory oversight in the regulation of oil and gas pipeline tolls. Under negotiated settlements pipelines and shippers are able to renegotiate inclusions in their cost of service while simultaneously creating a profit margin for the pipeline where none existed under the cost of service outcome of a traditional hearing. Predicated on the observed preference of pipelines and shippers for negotiated settlements; most economic literature assumes that these settlements represent increased efficiency over hearings. Various claims have been made as to why negotiated settlements are more efficient than hearings but little attention is paid to other elements that affect these preferences without increasing efficiency. This thesis constructs a model to illustrate the existence of positive gains to pipeline and shipper from the re-allocation of expenses through time. This inter-temporal reallocation implies higher tolls for future shippers which is a concern for the National Energy Board (responsible for regulating Canadian oil and gas pipelines) as it places an unfair burden on future shippers and future end consumers of oil and gas. Behaviour consistent with the model is observable in anecdotal and econometric evidence provided in this thesis. Empirical investigation by Littlechild (2007) into settlement procedures in the Florida electricity market reveal similar findings; however, this analysis represents the first attempt to model the behaviour formally and provide econometric results. The econometric analysis uses new data collected and compiled specifically for this thesis.
Open Access
Procurement of ancillary services in Alberta
(2007) Amery, Mohamed; Church, Jeffrey; Hollis, Aidan
This study proposes a procedure with which a regulator should determine the amount of ancillary service that a power generation source provides. It discusses how a regulator should decide which generator provides, say, spinning reserve during a given hour. The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) currently uses a bid process that considers only financial bids. The AESO should replace its current procedure for selecting firms to supply ancillary reserve with a system that correctly accounts for assets' correlations with total primary market availability. An improved procedure is one in which the operator collects information on the availability of the units during the hours of each day, calculates relevant statistical values, and selects the "best" firms in terms of financial bids and variability figures.
Open Access
Pull me – push you? The disparate financing mechanisms of drug research in global health
(2024-02-19) Matthey, Max A.; Hollis, Aidan
Abstract Background There is an inconsistency in the way pharmaceutical research is financed. While pull mechanisms are predominantly used to incentivize later-stage pharmaceutical research for products with demand in the Global North, so-called neglected diseases are chiefly financed by push funding. This discrepancy has so far been ignored in the academic debate, and any compelling explanation for why we draw the line between push and pull at poor people is lacking. Main body Clinical development of new pharmaceuticals is chiefly financed by free market pull mechanisms. Even in cases where markets fail to deliver adequate incentives, demand enhancement mechanisms are used to replicate pull funding artificially, for example, with subscription models for antibiotics. Push funding in clinical research is almost always used when the poverty of patients means that markets fail to create sufficient demand. The general question of whether push or pull generally is the more efficient way to conduct pharmaceutical research arises. Conclusions If the state is efficient in directing limited budgets for pharmaceutical research, push funding should be expanded to global diseases. If private industry is the more efficient actor, there would be enormous value in experimenting more aggressively with different approaches to enhance market demand artificially for neglected diseases.
Open Access
Repurposing existing drugs for new uses: a cohort study of the frequency of FDA-granted new indication exclusivities since 1997
(2021-01-04) Sahragardjoonegani, Babak; Beall, Reed F; Kesselheim, Aaron S; Hollis, Aidan
Abstract Background Drug repurposing (i.e., finding novel uses for existing drugs) is essential for maximizing medicines’ therapeutic utility, but obtaining regulatory approval for new indications is costly. Policymakers have therefore created temporary indication-specific market exclusivities to incentivize drug innovators to run new clinical investigations. The effectiveness of these exclusivities is poorly understood. Objective To determine whether generic entry impacts the probability of new indication additions. Methods For a cohort of all new small-molecule drugs approved by the FDA between July 1997 and May 2020, we tracked new indications added for the subset of drugs that experienced generic entry during the observation period and then analyzed how the probability of a new indication changed with the number of years since/to generic entry. Results Of the 197 new drugs that subsequently experienced generic entry, only 64 (32%) had at least one new indication added. The probability of a new indication addition peaked above 4% between 7 and 8 years prior to generic entry and then to dropped to near zero 15 years after FDA approval. We show that the limited duration of exclusivity reduces the number of secondary indications significantly. Conclusion Status quo for most drug innovators is creating novel one-indication products. Despite indication-specific exclusivities, the imminence of generic entry still has a detectable impact on reducing the chances of new indication additions. There is much room for improvement when it comes to incentivizing clinical investigations for new uses and unlocking existing medicines’ full therapeutic potential.
Open Access
Select Issues in Applied Regulatory Theory
(2015-09-28) Fellows, Garret; Hollis, Aidan
This dissertation comprises three chapters covering two topics in the area of applied regulatory theory. The first topic relates to the behavior of a firm subject to rate of return regulation while the second relates to bargaining outcomes in a theoretical model which can be applied to a negotiated settlements setting. In chapter 2 I present an empirical exercise showing evidence of a relationship between the shape of the yield curve and the composition of firms' capital structure with respect to durability. The results from chapter 2 are not specific to regulated industries; however, I use these results to inform a theoretical model of firm behavior, specific to firms subject to rate of return regulation. This model is developed in chapter 3. The modeled firm has access to multiple types of capital which are substitutes (imperfect or perfect) in production. These capital inputs are differentiated based on durability and heterogeneous marginal effects on the firm's total cost of capital. The results indicate that a regulated firm (relative to an unregulated firm) will over- or under-invest in specific assets depending on their durability and the size of the assets' marginal effects on the cost of capital relative to the regulated rate of return. In chapter 4 I present a bilateral bargaining model constructed to investigate the potential realization and distribution of bargaining quasi-rents. The results indicate that the realization of any quasi-rents requires the first mover have a sufficiently low proposal cost and that such rents are always captured by the first mover. Unlike most Rubinstein (1982) style bargaining games, the realized equilibrium may not be efficient in this game. As with the results of chapter 2, the results in chapter 4 are not constrained in application to regulated industries but do have specific relevance for the emergence of negotiated settlements wherein regulators facilitate bilateral bargaining as an alternative to traditional prescriptive regulation.
Open Access
Solutions for the Resource Adequacy Issue in Alberta: Capacity Market, Scarcity Pricing, or Single Buyer Model
(2018-04-30) Bao, Tianjiao; Hollis, Aidan; Church, Jeffrey; Walls, W. David
This thesis focuses on possible solutions to resolve the resource adequacy issue in an energy-only market with a low price cap. Many reasons lead to resource inadequacy, including demand flaws, the missing money problem, poor coordination by investors, and penetration of renewables. In order to ensure resource adequacy in the long run, the energy-only market requires a new market mechanism to incentivize investors to create more new capacity. The thesis mainly analyzes three possible solutions: a capacity market, increase of the price cap up to the value of lost load (VOLL) in the energy-only market (Scarcity Pricing), and a single buyer model.
Open Access
Strategic behaviour in the Alberta electricity market
(2002) Aksomitis, Kris; Hollis, Aidan
Open Access
The Silent Pandemic: Essays on the Interplay of Antimicrobial Use, Resistance and External Cost
(2023-08) Rahman, Sakib; Hollis, Aidan; Muehlenbachs, Lucija; Laliberte, Jean-William; Barkema, Herman; Roope, Laurence
The aim of this thesis is to take an economist’s perspective on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). AMR, now framed as a silent pandemic, is a natural response of microbes brought upon by selective pressure from using antimicrobials. Several controllable factors, primarily the extensive and continuous usage of antimicrobials, are hastening the increase of resistance. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the magnitude and duration of how antimicrobial usage effects resistance. The first two chapters of this thesis use empirical methodologies developed in the field of economics to analyze the causal relationship between usage and resistance. The chapters use comprehensive longitudinal public and proprietary data from Europe for empirical analysis. The first chapter, with usage and resistance data only for humans, finds that the prevalence of resistant bacteria rapidly rises following antibiotic usage and continues to rise for a minimum of four years thereafter. Strikingly, reducing antibiotic usage has minimal discernible effect on resistance. The second chapter studies the same relationships for food-producing animals and humans. Using a One-health perspective the study finds that antibiotic usage in food-producing animal and antibiotic usage in humans are independently and causally related to the prevalence of resistance in both humans and other animals. The third chapter frames AMR as an externality associated with AMU, and using new elasticity measures explores the external cost of AMU and potential policy responses.
Open Access
The Welfare Implication of Lifting the No Surcharge Rule in Credit Card Markets
(2016) Tan, Hongru; Church, Jeffrey; Eaton, Curtis; Hollis, Aidan
This dissertation investigates the welfare implications of banning the no surcharge rule (NSR) in credit card markets. Nowadays, Visa and MasterCard have been facing antitrust and regulatory investigations all over the world. They are charged for certain business practices that may adversely affect competition. Among all the business practices, the NSR has been particularly at issue. The NSR is a business practice that prohibits merchants from charging a higher price to purchases made using credit cards than to purchases made using other forms of payment. Chapter One investigates the welfare implication of banning the NSR using a model in which a monopoly credit card company provides credit card services to both consumers and Hotelling merchants through competitive issuing banks and competitive acquiring banks. The main finding is that banning the NSR decreases social welfare, which stands in contrast with previous core literature-- namely, Rochet and Tirole (2002) (RT2002). Moreover, this unambiguous conclusion for welfare holds in a open payment system, regardless of the degree of competition among issuing banks. Chapter Two investigates the welfare implication of banning the NSR using a model in which a monopoly credit card company provides credit card services to both consumers and monopoly merchants through competitive issuing banks and competitive acquiring banks. The main finding is that banning the NSR decreases social welfare because banning the NSR results in a double marginalization problem in providing credit card services. Another contribution of this chapter is that it provides an explanation of the surcharging behavior of merchants in Australia. Chapter Three applies a model of platform competition to investigate the welfare implication of lifting the NSR in credit card markets. This paper finds that lifting the NSR always drives down the provision of credit card service below the level of a typical equilibrium in a Cournot game and always decreases social welfare. Social welfare decreases because banning the NSR opens the door for the merchant to abuse its market power in reselling the credit card service. Therefore, a new distortion is generated after the ban of the NSR, and social welfare decreases.
Open Access
When the truth hurts: ordinary selling price regulation in a monopoly
(2021-05-13) Sahragardjooneghani, Babak; Hollis, Aidan; Beall, Reed; Migrow, Dimitri
How does restricting firms to communicate a truthful ordinary selling price affect pricing and profits when some consumers are uncertain about product quality? In this thesis we analyze a two-period monopoly model to study the welfare effect of ordinary selling price (OSP) regulation. In the model, quality is observed by informed consumers who buy in the first period. However, consumers who arrive in market in the second period are not able to discern quality, but must infer it indirectly through prices. We first characterize the necessary conditions for OSP regulation to make the first-period price informative for second-period consumers. We show that OSP regulation has no effect when the proportion of uninformed consumers is high. This means regulation is ineffective when it would be most useful. We then compare the equilibrium outcome when OSP is effective to the equilibrium outcome in an unregulated environment. A simple welfare measure indicates that restricting firms to communicate a truthful first-period price has no effect on the uninformed consumers' expected surplus, but does create a deadweight loss from deceptive pricing in the first period. This deceptive pricing occurs because OSP regulations provide incentives for a low-quality firm to charge a high initial price when doing so enables it to earn excess profits in the second period.