Poor Quality Drugs and Global Trade: A Pilot Study

Roger Bate, Ginger Zhe Jin, Aparna Mathur () and Amir Attaran

No 20469, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Experts claim that some Indian drug manufacturers cut corners and make substandard drugs for markets with non-existent, under-developed or emerging regulatory oversight, notably Africa. This paper assesses the quality of 1470 antibiotic and tuberculosis drug samples that claim to be made in India and were sold in Africa, India, and five mid-income non-African countries. We find that 10.9% of those products fail a basic assessment of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), and the majority of the failures are substandard (7%) as they contain some correct API but the amount of API is under-dosed. The distribution of these substandard products is not random: they are more likely to be found as unregistered products in Africa than in India or non-African countries. Since this finding is robust for manufacturer-drug fixed effects, one likely explanation is that Indian pharmaceutical firms and/or their export intermediaries do indeed differentiate drug quality according to the destination of consumption.

JEL-codes: D8 F14 F61 I1 L15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-09
Note: IO
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Roger Bate & Ginger Zhe Jin & Aparna Mathur & Amir Attaran, 2016. "Poor-Quality Drugs and Global Trade: A Pilot Study," American Journal of Health Economics, vol 2(3), pages 373-398.

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