Pharmaceutical Pricing in Emerging Markets: Effects of Income, Competition and Procurement

Patricia Danzon, Andrew W. Mulcahy and Adrian Towse

No 17174, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper analyzes determinants of ex-manufacturer prices for originator and generic drugs across a large sample of countries. We focus on drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in middle and low income countries (MLICs), with robustness checks to other therapeutic categories and other countries. We examine effects of per capita income, income dispersion, number and type of therapeutic and generic competitors, and whether the drugs are sold to retail pharmacies vs. tendered procurement by NGOs. The cross-national income elasticity of prices is 0.4 across high and low income countries, but is only 0.15 between MLICs, implying that drugs are least affordable relative to income in the lowest income countries. Within-country income inequality contributes to relatively high prices in MLICs. Number of therapeutic and generic competitors only weakly affects prices to retail pharmacies, plausibly because uncertain quality leads to competition on brand rather than price. Tendered procurement attracts multi-national generic suppliers and significantly reduces prices for originators and generics, compared to prices to retail pharmacies.

JEL-codes: I11 L11 O14 O25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-hea and nep-hme
Note: EH IO
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published as “Pharmaceutical pricing in emerging markets: Effects of income, competition, and procurement” with Andrew W. Mulcahy and Adrian K. Towse. Health Economics 2013. DOI: 10.1002/hec.3013

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17174.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:17174

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17174

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 ().