Internal Deadlines, Drug Approvals, and Safety Problems

Lauren Cohen, Umit G. Gurun and Danielle Li

American Economic Review: Insights, 2021, vol. 3, issue 1, 67-82

Abstract: Absent explicit quotas, incentives, reporting, or fiscal year-end motives, drug approvals around the world surge in December, at month-ends, and before respective major national holidays. Drugs approved before these informal deadlines are associated with significantly more adverse effects, including more hospitalizations, life-threatening incidents, and deaths—particularly, drugs most rushed through the approval process. These patterns are consistent with a model in which regulators rush to meet internal production benchmarks associated with salient calendar periods: this "desk-clearing" behavior results in more lax review, leading both to increased output and increased safety issues at particular—and predictable—periodicities over the year.

JEL-codes: D83 I11 L51 L65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20200086 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E120110V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20200086.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20200086.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

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:aea:aerins:v:3:y:2021:i:1:p:67-82

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20200086

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review: Insights is currently edited by Amy Finkelstein

More articles in American Economic Review: Insights from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().