Grants

The use of Markush structures in pharmaceutical patenting and their effect on R&D competition in drug development

Funding type: DFG research grant
Funding period: 2021-2024
Research team: Stefan Wagner (ESMT Berlin), Nate Jingze Niu (ESMT Berlin)

Markush structures are molecular skeletons that contain not only specific atoms but also include several placeholders which represent a set of broad set of chemical (sub) structures. They are used by pharmaceutical companies to claim a large class of compounds without the necessity of writing out every fully defined single chemical entity in a patent application. For instance, it has been estimated that the Markush structures claimed within a single patent underlying a blockbuster drug (the European patent EP 0810 209 protects the HIV drug “Prezista”) contain a total of 7*10^13 different compounds. While advantageous for pharmaceutical companies, the use of Markush structures in patent claims has sparked controversial debates amongst policy makers and practitioners.

The project aims to provide first evidence on the use and effect of Markush structures in the pharmaceutical industry. It compiles a comprehensive data set linking information on Markush structures contained in pharmaceutical patents to study how Markush structures affect innovation related outcomes including the intensity of horizontal and vertical R&D competition.

Accounting for transparency

Funding type: DFG transregional collaborative research center
Funding period: 2019-2023
Research team: Per Olsson (ESMT Berlin)
Cooperating institutions: Humboldt University Berlin, University of Mannheim, Paderborn University (project leads), LMU Munich, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management and Goethe University Frankfurt
Sub-project title: Transparency and the equity market

The TRR 266 Accounting for Transparency is a transregional Collaborative Research Center funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The team of more than 80 researchers examines how accounting and taxation affect firm and regulatory transparency and how regulation and transparency impact the economy and society. They intend to help develop effective regulation for firm transparency and a transparent tax system.

The relevance of these topics has increased since the global financial crisis of 2007 and the resulting demands for greater transparency. Calls for increased transparency are omnipresent, particularly after the recent series of financial crises and public outrage about specific multinational firms that do not pay their fair share of taxes. The Collaborative Research Center TRR 266 Accounting for Transparency intends to help develop effective regulation for firm transparency and a transparent tax system. To this end, the Center's research aims to make an important contribution to increase trust in business and politics. To answer the research questions the researchers will account for the interaction of competing incentives from different areas (managerial accounting, financial accounting and taxation) and conduct the research collaboratively within a team of researchers with diverse areas of expertise.

The sub-project Transparency and the Equity Market by Per Olsson (ESMT Berlin) and Sönke Sievers (Paderborn University) reinvestigates how financial reporting transparency can be measured in the equity market. 

More information is available on the official website of the Collaborative Research Center and the TRR 266 YouTube Channel.

The social process of innovation: The role of novelty and social cues in idea evaluation

Funding type: DFG research grant
Funding period: 2018-2022
Research team: Linus Dahlander (ESMT Berlin), Arne Thomas (former ESMT Berlin)

This research project sought to push the study of innovation. It aimed to advance the understanding of an important, yet understudied, phase of the innovation process: the evaluation of ideas proposed for innovation. To understand why some ideas gain support while others do not, the focus was on (1) the role of idea novelty and (2) the role of social cues in the idea evaluation process. It intended to provide causal evidence on how managers evaluate ideas, therefore two field experiments within two organizations where employees generate ideas for innovation and senior managers evaluate them and decide on their implementation will be conducted.
The project advanced theory on idea novelty and social cues, and pushed the research frontier by combining methods from computer science with field experimental designs enabling causal inference.

Behavioral theory and economic applications

Funding type: European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant

Funding period: 2012-2017

Research team: Botond Kőszegi (Principal Investigator), Paul Heidhues (former ESMT Berlin)

Cooperating institution: Kozep-Europai Egyetem (CEU), Budapest

The European Research Council (ERC) bestowed a team of researchers including former ESMT Professor and Lufthansa Chair in Competition and Regulation Paul Heidhues a starting grant for five years. The team, led by Professor Botond Köszegi of Central European University and Berkeley, researched “Behavioral theory and economic applications.” Professor Heidhues explored the implications for market outcomes, welfare, and policy when consumers mis-perceive certain aspects of products or contracts. Established by the European Commission, the ERC encourages the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and supports frontier research across all fields on the basis of scientific excellence. 

Consumer competence research training (CONCORT)

Funding type: EU Seventh Framework Program, Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN)

Funding period: 2011-2015

Research team: Francine Espinoza Petersen (former ESMT Berlin), Ning Chen, Cara de Boer

Cooperating institutions: Academic partners: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Utrecht University, INSEAD, London Business School

Corporate partners: Tobii, VicarVision, Philips

Consumer science is touching the lives of 493 million EU consumers with their consumption representing 58% of the EU GDP, yet the insights of consumer research typically fail to have a substantial impact on consumer welfare. Consumer research is scattered across several disciplines in the social sciences with little communication occurring between research and practice.

The Consumer competence research training (CONCORT) tackled these issues, abandoning the marketing perspective of the persuasive agent trying to affect consumer decisions, and aimed to pioneer research from the consumer perspective. The project partners studied consumer competence, a broad set of abilities, intuitions, knowledge and skills consumers need in order to make decisions that help them navigate successfully in the economic environment.

The aim of the CONCORT project was to train 14 Early Stage Researchers in this new perspective, in 8 high level partners: three business schools, two broad universities, and three corporate partners. ESMT supervised two Early Stage Researchers (ESRs), who were funded by the CONCORT grant.

Researching consumer perceived ethicality (CPE) of companies and brands

Funding type: EU Seventh Framework Program, Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (IEF)

Funding period: 2012-2014

Research team: CB Bhattacharya (former ESMT Berlin), Katja H. Brunk

Issues such as corporate social responsibility and business ethics have increasingly taken center stage in today’s society. While researchers agree that consumers react negatively/positively to companies they perceive as un/ethical, the actual question of what evokes such a negative or positive perception has not been investigated. To this day, little is known about how moral equity is generated and emerges in the consumer’s mind. 

The project redressed this research imbalance. In order to better understand the link between un/ethical corporate conduct

and consumer responses, the question of how ethical perceptions are formed and affected by corporate behaviour was brought into focus. The research facilitated much-needed theory building and deeper insight into consumer reactions to corporate ethics, corporate social responsibility, or corporate reputation efforts.

Secure digital identities

Funding type: Scientific support, networking, and transfer of results for the Secure Digital Identities Showcase innovation competition 

Funding period: 2021-2024
Research team: Digital Society Institute 
Cooperating institutions: Ernst & Young GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft, Nimbus Technologieberatung GmbH

The accompanying research for the "Secure Digital Identities" showcase program will help the projects to achieve the goals of the initiative. It will support the program in identifying cross-cutting issues of secure digital identities beyond the individual projects and finding solutions for all of them. It will promote the transfer of the work of the project networks to industry, administration and science. Finally, the accompanying research will demonstrate the opportunities offered by secure digital identities to experts and the general public alike.

The projects will receive extensive support, establishing a wide network of contacts , they will be provided with high-quality expertise, and  the results of the showcase program will be communicated to the relevant circles. In addition to the selected showcase projects, the accompanying research is also available to other funding projects commissioned by the BMWi with its services, if required.

More information is available on the official “Secure Digital Identities” website of the BMWi.

Systematization of IT security law - ITSRsys

Funding type: Research Framework Programme of the German Federal Government on IT Security Self-Determined and Secure in the Digital World
Funding period: 2020-2023
Research team: Digital Society Institute
Cooperating institutions: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), Institut für Informations- und Wirtschaftsrecht (IIWR)

Subproject: Classification of systems and inclusion of the current state of the art

IT security requirements are part of a growing number of regulations. In addition to "general" regulations, there is also "sector-specific" IT security law. In addition, there are "primary" IT security regulations that address the traditional goals of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of IT systems, as well as "secondary" regulations in which the IT security goals are a means to achieve particular subject-specific goals, such as tax secrecy or the integrity of business transactions. IT security provisions are also included in data protection law. Up to now, general and specific law are systematically related to each other only in a limited way. The rapid development of IT security law has led to inconsistencies and contradictions. This makes it more difficult to implement IT security measures and to supply compliant IT security services and IT security products. The "ITSR.sys" project developed an approach to systematize the entire legal field of IT security and develop a model of a "General IT Security Law" that spans all areas, sectors, and policy fields.  

ETIBLOGG - Energy trading via blockchain-technology in the local green grid

Funding type: German federal ministry's program “Smart Service Welt II”

Funding period: 2018-2021

Research team: Christoph Burger (ESMT Berlin), Jens Weinmann (ESMT Berlin)

Cooperating institutions: GETEC Energie AG, Mixed Mode GmbH, PONTON GmbH, Fraunhofer IISB, consider it GmbH, NXP Semiconductors Germany GmbH, Universität Hamburg

Subproject: Internationale experiences and best practices: Blockchain in the energy sector

The transformation of electricity supply from a uni-directional transmission and distribution network to a smart grid is an important step towards achieving the climate protection goals and reducing the use of fossil fuels. The project ETIBLOGG addresses essential elements of this change and tests market mechanisms and the required IT infrastructure, based on the decentralized ledger technology Blockchain.

International best practices are identified and summarized in a benchmark study concluding with concrete recommendations for action and lessons learned, both in the promotion of specific business models and regulatory frameworks. In cooperation with Hamburg University and two corporate partners, potential use cases and business strategies are then operationalized and applied to the market platform of ETIBLOGG, given the German regulatory context.

Rationality and competition: The economic performance of individuals and firms

Funding type: DFG collaborative research center
Funding period: 2017-2020
Research team: Rajshri Jayaraman (ESMT Berlin), Florian Englmaier (Ludiwg-Maximilians-Universität Munich)
Collaborating institutions: Ludiwg-Maximilians-Universität Munich (coordinator), Humboldt-Universität Berlin, 
Technische Universität Berlin, Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institut – Leibniz Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung 

Subproject title: Incentive design in the presence of social preferences

The sub-project by Prof Jayaraman and Prof. Englmaier focused on the human resource management practices in firms. A firm’s ability to compete effectively on product markets depends crucially on its success in attracting, retaining, and motivating productive workers in competitive labor markets. Standard economic models focus on the design of incentive mechanisms that are based on monetary rewards. While these are clearly important, the standard model has, until relatively recently, failed to incorporate the presence of social preferences of workers, including fairness, reciprocity, identity and peer effects in the workplace. The project examined the effects of diverse human resource management (HRM) practices - such as incentive pay, screening for traits, or team based work organization - on worker productivity, and thereby firm competitiveness, whilst accounting for the possibility that workers are motivated not only by financial considerations but also by social preferences.