 Documenting the financialisation of the pharmaceutical industryJoan Busfield Social Science & Medicine, 2020, vol. 258, issue C Abstract: The aim of this paper is to explore the growing financialisation of the pharmaceutical industry from the beginning of the 1980s onwards and to consider its implications. It examines a number of features that demonstrate the increasing influence of the financial sector on the industry, including changing patterns of shareholder ownership, the importance attached to the idea of maximising shareholder value, the pay and share options given to company chief executives and other senior managers, the use of share buybacks, the increase in the outsourcing of manufacturing and of research and development, along with the growing use of mergers and acquisitions and of new forms of borrowing to fund them. The paper examines data in relation to each of these areas in turn in order to provide evidence of the growing financialisation of the industry and to highlight some of its consequences for the industry's task of developing and manufacturing medicines that enhance population health. Date: 2020 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:258:y:2020:i:c:s0277953620303154 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113096 Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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