The Competitive Effects of Drug Withdrawals

John Cawley and John Rizzo

No 11223, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In September 1997, the anti-obesity drugs Pondimin and Redux, ingredients in the popular drug combination fen-phen, were withdrawn from the market for causing potentially fatal side effects. That event provides an opportunity for studying how consumers respond to drug withdrawals. In theory, remaining drugs in the therapeutic class could enjoy competitive benefits, or suffer negative spillovers, from the withdrawal of a competing drug. Our findings suggest that, while the withdrawal of a rival drug may impose negative spillovers in the form of higher patient quit rates, on the whole non-withdrawn drugs in the same therapeutic class enjoy competitive benefits in the form of higher utilization.

JEL-codes: I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published as Cawley, John, and John A. Rizzo. “Spillover Effects of Prescription Drug Withdrawals.” Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research, 2008, 19: 119-144.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11223.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:nbr:nberwo:11223

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11223

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().