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Summary. We explore affiliations of high-level public officials in East and South-East Europe and Central Asia with higher education institutions, which create a risk of undue influence because of conflict of interest.

Includes discussion of ways in which mainstream reforms do not address institutional/legal/influence-market corruption.

Summary. Two-year research project on Ethics and Integrity in Public Life, conducted by the Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa (ICS-ULisboa), Portugal and financed by Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos (FFMS).The project focus on ethics self-regulatory measures implemented by representative institutions across the EU democracies.

Summary. Scholars across the social sciences have long hypothesized that individual contributors often make political contributions on the basis of partisanship or ideology and that the most active donors may be the most ideologically motivated. But drawing from a newly constructed “big” data set called the Longitudinal Elite Contributor Database (LECD), the author shows that past studies have failed to detect several striking patterns in the strategies of individual contributors: (1) a persistent positive association between frequency of giving and bipartisan or “split contributing” and (2) significant declines in the likelihood of bipartisan contributing since the late 1980s. The author shows that donors who give to both parties also target more moderate incumbents of each political party, relative to partisan donors. Taken together, the findings suggest that repeat individual donors are less partisan in their strategies, and vis-à-vis the incumbents to whom they send donations, these repeat contributors are also less ideologically extreme.

Summary. Drug shortages and increasing generic drug prices are associated with low levels of competition. Mergers and acquisitions impact the level of competition. Record merger and acquisition activity was reported for the pharmaceutical sector in 2014/15, yet information on mergers and acquisitions in the generic drug sector are absent from the literature. This information is necessary to understand if and how such mergers and acquisitions can be a factor in drug shortages and increasing prices. METHODS: Data on completed merger and acquisition deals that had a generic drug company being taken over (i.e. 'target') were extracted from Bloomberg Finance L.P. The number and announced value of deals are presented globally, for the United States, and globally excluding the United States annually from 1995 to 2016 in United States dollars. RESULTS: Generic drug companies comprised 9.3% of the value of all deals with pharmaceutical targets occurring from 1995 to 2016. Globally, in 1995 there were no deals, in 2014 there were 22 deals worth $1.86 billion, in 2015 there were 34 deals totalling $33.56 billion, and in 2016 there were 42 deals worth in excess of $44 billion. This substantial increase was partially attributed to Teva's 2016 acquisition of Allergan's generic drug business. The surge in mergers and acquisitions for 2015/16 was driven by deals in the United States, where they represented 89.7% of the dollar value of deals in those years. CONCLUSIONS: The recent blitz in mergers and acquisitions signals that the generic drug industry is undergoing a transformation, especially in the United States. This restructuring can negatively affect the level of competition that might impact prices and shortages for some products, emphasizing the importance of updating regulations and procurement policies.

Summary. Discusses developments in the issue of whether to regulate the practice of double-booking surgeons to maximize revenue.

Summary. This article aims to the logical development of a practical and applicable analysis model of argumentative transparency, specifically for the study of public policies. To this end, we draw upon a “political concept of transparency” which redefines pragmatic logic operations in contexts of trust and cooperation between actors. The model combines a principal-agent framework, non-linear assumptions of production of information, and conversational maxims of use of language. This results in an analysis that is focused on the actors’ capacity and their relation. The model also finds a necessary link between active and passive transparency processes, where the building of trust arising from transparency is directly associated with the reduction of control costs. In addition, this article intends to be an applied model, with visual tools related to transparent decision-making processes, protocols for marking up transparency in texts and, finally, an empirical analysis of transparency in the argument of specific public policies. The combination of multiple frameworks and the deduction of a logical model presents an original work for the study of public policies.

Summary. Investigates factors that lead physicians to be untruthful with patients.

Summary. Explores how liability concerns influence physicians to order care that patients don’t need.

Summary. Partnership with Dinçer grew out of the Institutional Corruption conference in 2012.

Summary. This piece challenges the claim that public health agencies should partner with food companies because they have a “shared responsibility” to address obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases. Governments should discharge their responsibilities, this piece argues, by effectively regulating industry actors, rather than collaborating with them.

Summary. This piece raises the concern that secret settlements with corporate actors (such as oil and gas companies engaged in fracking) may conceal serious threats to public health.

Summary. Describes how commonly drug companies fail to adhere to obligations to disclose clinical trial results. My collaboration with Dr. Miller is a direct result of my Safra fellowship.

Summary. Of all of my work, these three papers most specifically draw from the the conceptual frames developed in the IC Safra Lab - although their explicit reference to it varies. The risk of IC to public credibility of scientific and scholarly institutions stands at the focus of this work, especially the paradox of the pursuit of value-free science as a value-laden approach to defend this crediblity without accountability.