The productivity crisis in pharmaceutical R&D

Fabio Pammolli (), Massimo Riccaboni () and Laura Magazzini

No 06/2010, Working Papers from University of Verona, Department of Economics

Abstract: We analyze the decline of R&D productivity in pharmaceuticals and its determinants. Since the molecular biology revolution, science has dramatically expanded the set of plausible therapeutic targets. However, innovation has become more difficult to achieve, and attrition rates of R&D projects have increased, especially in late-phase clinical trials. We show that the R&D productivity slowdown is associated with a higher concentration of R&D investments in high-risk domains, corresponding to unsolved therapeutic needs and unexploited biological mechanisms. We compare the strategies of European and US companies, finding differences in the composition of R&D portfolios, but no evidence of any productivity gap.

Keywords: R&D productivity; pharmaceutical industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-ino and nep-tid
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dse.univr.it//workingpapers/WP0610.pdf First version (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:ver:wpaper:06/2010

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Verona, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael Reiter ().