The impact of science-intensive drugs on longevity and cure rate: Evidence from new prescription drugs launched in Japan

Junichi Nishimura, Sadao Nagaoka and Mariko Yoneyama-Hirozane

Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 2022, vol. 64, issue C

Abstract: This paper examines how new science-intensive drugs improve the longevity of the population and the cure rate of hospitalized patients (inpatients). We develop a comprehensive longitudinal-disease-level panel data set, matched with drugs with a new molecular entity (NME) launched in Japan and classified by science intensity. Estimates suggest that the increase in the diversity of science-intensive NMEs (or NME stock) used for treating a disease significantly contributed to longevity and to the improvement of the cure rate of inpatients. In contrast, we find that non science-intensive NME stock does not significantly enhance these outcomes. Our results also suggest that controlling for the effects of surgeries does not reduce the effects of science-intensive drugs and that quality of science exploited for the discovery of an NME also plays a role in the effects. We have validated our indicator of science-intensive NMEs as a measure of the contribution of drugs to treatment, based on a survey of physicians. The results show that scientific advancement and exploitation for drug innovations critically contribute to improving human welfare.

Keywords: Science intensity; New molecular entity (NME); Disease, Mean age at death; Cure rate of inpatients (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 L65 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889158322000132
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jjieco:v:64:y:2022:i:c:s0889158322000132

DOI: 10.1016/j.jjie.2022.101203

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Japanese and International Economies is currently edited by Takeo Hoshi

More articles in Journal of the Japanese and International Economies from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().