Social value

Welfare loss means any social value that could be gained in theory but is lost due to the market structure. 

Social value is created insofar as an innovation reaches the marketplace, and consumers buy it insofar as it meets their needs. The producers who can manufacture it at a cost that is lower than the price sell it. In a competitive market, this process forces prices down to a point of maximum consumer... 

Those inventions that are valuable for society, which include innovative pharmaceuticals, generate positive externalities, that is, the benefits falls to society at large. The sum of these benefits gives the social benefit or value of the invention. In this way, patents represent the appropriation of part of this social value. Naturally, when businesses decide to undertake a project they do so with their own benefit in mind. Some research, particularly basic research, might not be undertaken in these circumstances, and therefore governments decide to invest to fill the gap that may be left by the patent system. Basic research allows the development of multiple applications and the discovery of scientific principles. The field of genetics is a prime example of this. 

Kremer16 then went on to make a precise estimate of the social value of an innovation or surplus under a situation of competition and under a monopoly. Thus, for example, for a price five times higher than the price fixed according to the marginal price, we detect a static distortion of 1.5, that is, the social rate of return of an innovation in a situation with marginal cost prices will be 1.5 times the return on the investment under monopoly prices. In this situation the social value of an innovation in a competitive environment would be 9.35 times the social value in a monopoly, that is, when there is no welfare loss. Kremer thus provides an estimate of welfare loss from a more thorough analytical perspective, and shows that it can be sizeable. 

Beyond the formal comparison of different methods, Kremer16 has put forward an original system whereby governments would acquire the patent from its creators at its social value and transfer it to the public domain. The author acknowledges the difficulty of establishing the social value of an innovation, but proposes an invitation to tender to determine the private value of a patent. 

As society advances, its values depend on what is produced and those sources of production. However, as the means to acquire products becomes easier, values turn inward to the general societal welfare and our environment. Uncontrolled fire can devastate our assets and production sources, and this relates to the societal costs of fire prevention and loss restoration. The effects of fire on people and the environment become social issues that depend on the political ideology and economics that prevail in the state. Thus, attention to fire prevention and control depend on its perceived damage potential and our social values in the state. While these issues have faced all cultures, perhaps the twentieth century ultimately provided the basis for addressing fire with proper science in the midst of significant social and technological advances, especially among the developed countries. 

Social value Scientific validity Fair subject selection Informed consent Favorable risk-benefit ratio Independent review Respect for human subjects... 

To understand both fashion and alchemy we must relate these practices to a concept with which they are both deeply entwined the concept of myth. Fashion and alchemy are both usually seen as unserious practices with neither the social value of the fine arts nor the accuracy of the exact sciences. But myth is neither the opposite of science, nor is it a deception or untrue image of the world. Myths are the powerful imaginative fabrics we weave our world with. Myth does not veil reality but makes it visible, and just like fashion we live our lives inside it. It wraps the world with a holistic threadwork not fragmenting the world into atomized and isolated data but weaving the narratives of the world into visible and tangible shapes. 

A complex mixture of constitutional Hmits, detailed statutory regulations, and social values provide a legal regime that governs searches, surveillance, and seizures. These legal and statutory principles are briefly presented using federal law. 

All health plans would receive a fixed-dollar subsidy for vaccine purchase and vaccine administration. The committee specified that the fixed-dollar subsidy be made a function of the social benefit of the vaccine for the groups for which the vaccine was mandated, but the subsidy would not necessarily equal the full social value. The subsidy would not reflect R D or on production costs. Although insurance coverage for particular vaccines... 

The social value reflects the savings attributable to the vaccine accruing to the individual who receives the vaccine and to others who otherwise would incur adverse health effects from the person s not being vaccinated or would... 

Two characteristics of vaccine markets make prizes an attractive incentive system. Vaccines create a large social value that firms cannot fully appropriate, and this social value can be calculated ex ante. When aggregate deadweight loss is the primary concern and the social value of an invention is verifiable (as is likely for vaccines), prizes maybe preferable to an intellectual property system (Maurer and Scotchmer 2004). Unlike under the patent system, the number of participants and the potential duplication of effort can be altered with the size of the prize. Additionally, if social value is expected to be much higher than costs, a prize can be set lower than social value. 

But sequential innovations often add much more to social value as well as to reduce cost through process and follow-on innovations (Sinclair, Klepper, and Cohen 2000). With an innovation in the public domain, firms may have a lower incentive to improve upon it. But in the case of vaccines, a follow-on innovation may also qualify for a new round ofprizes. The case of cost-saving process innovations may be a concern, but for these types of innovations patents have been shown to be less important than other mechanisms such as secrecy (Walsh, Arora, and Cohen 2003). 

Setting the subsidy to social value or the lesser value reflecting the price that maximizes consumer surplus would reduce some political opposition to a subsidy. In effect, the internalities would be paid from public rather... 

We have discussed alternative methods for setting the value of the subsidy. According to one approach, the government would purchase the patent then the subsidy to insurers at most would reflect the marginal cost of producing and administering the vaccine. The patent system has deficiencies in providing an incentive for R D, especially for a product in which social value may be well approximated by researchers. 

A recent lOM report points out that government pricing policies - low costs and price caps - conflict with the need to stimulate investment in vaccine development and production capacity (Rappuoli, Miller, and Falkow 2002). Given the high social value of vaccines development (McGuire 2003), this policy seems to be shortsighted. 

Brown, Richard Maxwell. No Duty to Retreat Violence and Values in American History and Culture. Norman University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. A study of the social values involving the appropriate use of violence from frontier days to the present. Brown emphasizes the history of the American West. He also provides an important historical context for the development of gun regulations. 

USEPA performed post hoc cost-benefit calculations and sensitivity analyses for several regulatory options (41). Population exposure calculations were prepared for pre- and postregulation scenarios, and risks were calculated by using the CAG multistage model. A cost of 200,000 per cancer case avoided was assumed on the basis of both earnings and social value. 

Psychedelics are liable to arouse moral indignation, because emotions are always likely to be deeply stimulated when someone else is indulging in new pleasures that may alter social values, especially when the users are young and rash and often brash as well. Medicine has a duty not to make this confusion and uncertainty any worse. Physicians are not police. Their duty is to inform the public as truthfully as they can, without excessive bias, resounding moral statements, or... 

Today s workforce has a new set of social values. Ten years ago, a manager who was offered a promotion in a distant city would not have questioned the move. Today, a manager in that same situation might choose family happiness instead of career advancement. 

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