Is pharmaceutical detailing informative? Evidence from contraindicated drug prescriptions

Guofang Huang (), Matthew Shum and Wei Tan
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Guofang Huang: Purdue University
Matthew Shum: Caltech
Wei Tan: Mingde Economic Research Inc.

Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), 2019, vol. 17, issue 2, No 2, 135-160

Abstract: Abstract Crestor, an important but controversial cholesterol-lowering drug, is contraindicated for use by senior and Asian patients. In this paper, we exploit this fact along with unique physician-level prescription and detailing data for statin drugs to examine the hypothesis that detailing is informative. Our tests are based on a simple model in which detailing impacts physicians’ expected match utility of Crestor for different types of patients. We find strong evidence for the informative-detailing hypothesis: relative to the other patients, detailing significantly reduces physicians’ likelihood of prescribing Crestor to contraindicated patients. Our results are robust to detailing being correlated with physician-specific unobserved factors and/or differential trends in individual physicians’ attitudes toward Crestor.

Keywords: Pharmaceutical detailing; Informative advertising; Sales force; Contraindications; Bayesian learning models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11129-018-9206-4

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