The Economics of the Public Option: Evidence from Local Pharmaceutical Markets

Juan Pablo Atala, José Ignacio Cuesta, Felipe González and Cristóbal Otero ()

No 561, Documentos de Trabajo from Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Abstract: We study the economic and political effects of competition by state-owned firms, leveraging the decentralized entry of public pharmacies to local markets in Chile around local elections. Public pharmacies sell drugs at a third of private pharmacy prices, because of a stronger upstream bargaining position and downstream market power in the private sector, but are also of lower quality. Exploiting a field experiment and quasiexperimental variation, we show that public pharmacies affected consumer shopping behavior, inducing market segmentation and price increases in the private sector. This segmentation created winners and losers, as consumers who switched to public pharmacies benefited, whereas consumers who stayed with private pharmacies were harmed. The countrywide entry of public pharmacies would reduce yearly consumer drug expenditure by 1.6 percent, which outweighs the costs of the policy by 52 percent. Mayors that introduced public pharmacies received more votes in the subsequent election, particularly by the target population of the policy.

Keywords: competition; state-owned firms; pharmacies; political returns (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H4 L3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-hea and nep-lam
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.economia.uc.cl/docs/doctra/dt-561.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Economics of the Public Option: Evidence from Local Pharmaceutical Markets (2024)
Working Paper: The Economics of the Public Option: Evidence from Local Pharmaceutical Markets (2023)
Working Paper: The Economics of the Public Option: Evidence from Local Pharmaceutical Markets (2022)
Working Paper: The Economics of the Public Option:Evidence from Local Pharmaceutical Markets (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ioe:doctra:561

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Documentos de Trabajo from Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jaime Casassus ().