Working Paper No. 24514 GDP and derived metrics (e.g., productivity) have been central to understanding economic progress and well-being. In principle, the change in consumer surplus (compensating ...expenditure) provides a superior, and more direct, measure of the change in well-being, especially for digital goods, but in practice, it has been difficult to measure. We explore the potential of massive online choice experiments to measure consumers’ willingness to accept compensation for losing access to various digital goods and thereby estimate the consumer surplus generated from these goods. We test the robustness of the approach and benchmark it against established methods, including incentive compatible choice experiments that require participants to give up Facebook for a certain period in exchange for compensation. The proposed choice experiments show convergent validity and are massively scalable. Our results indicate that digital goods have created large gains in well-being that are missed by conventional measures of GDP and productivity. By periodically querying a large, representative sample of goods and services, including those which are not priced in existing markets, changes in consumer surplus and other new measures of well-being derived from these online choice experiments have the potential for providing cost-effective supplements to existing national income and product accounts.
A puzzling development over the past 15 years is decline in Total Factor Productivity in many advanced economies. Part of this decline may be due to the rapid growth of free digital goods. ...Statistical agencies have no reliable way to measure the benefits of the introduction of free goods. This is true even when the provision of the goods is paid for via advertising. Yet these free goods are enormously popular and surely create substantial utility for households. In this paper, we suggest a methodology which will allow statistical agencies to form rough approximations to the benefits that flow to households from new free goods. The present paper draws heavily on the contributions of Brynjolfsson, Collis, Diewert, Eggers and Fox (2019) (subsequent references will be to BCDEF) and Diewert, Fox and Schreyer (2019). In section I, we outline how the reservation price methodology introduced by Hicks (1940; 114) can be used to measure the consumption benefits to households of new products that are provided at zero cost or costs that are close to zero. This Hicksian approach relies on normal index number theory but requires the estimation of reservation prices. In section II, we show how choice experiments about compensation for product withdrawals can be used to estimate these reservation prices. Section III concludes with a summary and implications.
Working Paper No. 25695 The welfare contributions of the digital economy, characterized by the proliferation of new and free goods, are not well-measured in our current national accounts. We derive ...explicit terms for the welfare contributions of these goods and introduce a new metric, GDP-B which quantifies their benefits, rather than costs. We apply this framework to several empirical examples including Facebook and smartphone cameras and estimate their valuations through incentive compatible choice experiments. For example, including the welfare gains from Facebook would have added between 0.05 and 0.11 percentage points to GDP-B growth per year in the US.
The welfare contributions of the digital economy, characterized by the proliferation of new and free goods, are not well-measured in our current national accounts. We derive explicit terms for the ...welfare contributions of these goods and introduce a new metric, GDP-B which quantifies their benefits, rather than costs. We apply this framework to several empirical examples including Facebook and smartphone cameras and estimate their valuations through incentive-compatible choice experiments. For example, including the welfare gains from Facebook would have added between 0.05 and 0.11 percentage points to GDP-B growth per year in the US.
The welfare contributions of the digital economy, characterized by the proliferation of new and free goods, are not well-measured in our current national accounts. We derive explicit terms for the ...welfare contributions of these goods and introduce a new metric, GDP-B which quantifies their benefits, rather than costs. We apply this framework to several empirical examples including Facebook and smartphone cameras and estimate their valuations through incentive compatible choice experiments. For example, including the welfare gains from Facebook would have added between 0.05 and 0.11 percentage points to GDP-B growth per year in the US.
The welfare contributions of the digital economy, characterized by the proliferation of new and free goods, are not well-measured in our current national accounts. We derive explicit terms for the ...welfare contributions of these goods and introduce a new metric, GDP-B which quantifies their benefits, rather than costs. We apply this framework to several empirical examples including Facebook and smartphone cameras and estimate their valuations through incentive-compatible choice experiments. For example, including the welfare gains from Facebook would have added between 0.05 and 0.11 percentage points to GDP-B growth per year in the US.
This study examines top managers' risk perceptions in internationalization decisions. 126 CEOs and top managers responsible for internationalization in companies with headquarters in Germany, ...Switzerland, or Austria took part in our experiment. Applying random utility theory in a conjoint choice experiment enables the measurement of top managers' preferences for target countries and entry modes. Country-specific measures of geographic, cultural, economic, and political distances serve as covariates to explain country preferences and to quantify the effect on internationalization decisions. Our results show that distance dimensions are the primary drivers of risk assessment, whereas entry-mode choice is secondary. Internationalization may therefore be a hierarchical decision in which managers choose target market (and risk profile) and view entry-mode choice as subordinate to other environmental factors.
Clinical options for systemic therapy of neuroendocrine tumors (NET) are limited. Development of new drugs requires suitable representative
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model systems. So far, the unavailability of a human ...model with a well-differentiated phenotype and typical growth characteristics has impaired preclinical research in NET. Herein, we establish and characterize a lymph node-derived cell line (NT-3) from a male patient with well-differentiated pancreatic NET. Neuroendocrine differentiation and tumor biology was compared with existing NET cell lines BON and QGP-1.
growth was assessed in a xenograft mouse model. The neuroendocrine identity of NT-3 was verified by expression of multiple NET-specific markers, which were highly expressed in NT-3 compared with BON and QGP-1. In addition, NT-3 expressed and secreted insulin. Until now, this well-differentiated phenotype is stable since 58 passages. The proliferative labeling index, measured by Ki-67, of 14.6% ± 1.0% in NT-3 is akin to the original tumor (15%-20%), and was lower than in BON (80.6% ± 3.3%) and QGP-1 (82.6% ± 1.0%). NT-3 highly expressed somatostatin receptors (SSTRs: 1, 2, 3, and 5). Upon subcutaneous transplantation of NT-3 cells, recipient mice developed tumors with an efficient tumor take rate (94%) and growth rate (139% ± 13%) by 4 weeks. Importantly, morphology and neuroendocrine marker expression of xenograft tumors resembled the original human tumor.
High expression of somatostatin receptors and a well-differentiated phenotype as well as a slow growth rate qualify the new cell line as a relevant model to study neuroendocrine tumor biology and to develop new tumor treatments.
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Nanobodies (VHHs) are the single variable immunoglobulin domains of heavy chain antibodies (hcAbs) that naturally occur in alpacas and other camelids. The two variable domains of ...conventional antibodies typically interact via a hydrophobic interface. In contrast, the corresponding surface area of nanobodies is hydrophilic, rendering these single immunoglobulin domains highly soluble, robust to harsh environments, and exceptionally easy to format into bispecific reagents. In homage to Geoffrey Burnstock, the pioneer of purinergic signaling, we provide a brief history of nanobody-mediated modulation of purinergic signaling, using our nanobodies targeting P2X7 and the NAD+-metabolizing ecto-enzymes CD38 and ARTC2.2 as examples.
The synthesis of polystyrene-block-poly2-(N-morpholino)ethyl methacrylate (PS-b-PMEMA) as a new highly amphiphilic and multiple stimuli-responsive block copolymer is presented. To achieve high ...molecular weights far beyond 100 kDa in a highly controlled manner (dispersities < 1.1), a synthetic route via sequential combination of anionic polymerization for the PS block and reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization for the PMEMA block is used. The synthesized block copolymers are investigated regarding their microphase separation in bulk, which delivers well-ordered self-assembled bulk structures as evidenced by small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). In aqueous solution, the block copolymer self-assembles into narrowly size distributed micelles with a PMEMA corona. The stimuli-triggered micelle response towards temperature, pH, and kosmotropic as well as chaotropic salts is shown via various dynamic light scattering (DLS) experiments. Furthermore, a dependency of aggregate size on solvent composition in polymer/tetrahydrofuran/water mixtures is described. The reported findings deliver a feasible pathway to high molecular weight block copolymers with tailored chemical properties and show the potential of PS-b-PMEMA as material for mechanically demanding switchable devices.
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•Polystyrene-block-poly2-(N-morpholino)ethyl methacrylate (PS-b-PMEMA) is highly amphiphilic and multiple stimuli-responsive.•The block copolymers are synthesized via combination of anionic and RAFT polymerization.•High molecular weights far beyond 100 kDa can be obtained.•In bulk, the BCP self-assembles into very distinct microphase-separated structures.•In water, PS-core micelles are formed. The PMEMA corona responds to temperature (in two steps), pH-value and salts.
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