Patents and the global diffusion of new drugs

Iain Cockburn, Jean Lanjouw and Mark Schankerman

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper studies how patent rights and price regulation affect how fast new drugs are launched in different countries, using newly constructed data on launches of 642 new drugs in 76 countries for the period 1983-2002, and information on the duration and content of patent and price control regimes. Price regulation strongly delays launch, while longer and more extensive patent protection accelerates it. Health policy institutions, and economic and demographic factors that make markets more profitable, also speed up diffusion. The effects are robust to using instruments to control for endogeneity of policy regimes. The results point to an important role for patents and other policy choices in driving the diffusion of new innovations. This project was initiated by Jean (Jenny) Lanjouw. Tragically, Jenny died in late 2005, but had asked us to complete the project. This took much longer than expected because it involved complete reconstruction of the data set and empirical work. It is essentially a new paper in its current form, but it remains an important part of Jenny’s legacy and a topic to which she devoted much of her intellectual and policy efforts. We hope she would be satisfied with our work which, for us, was a labor of love.

Keywords: Patents; pharmaceuticals; diffusion; drug launches; price regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 K19 L65 O31 O33 O34 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ino, nep-int, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-tid
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60450/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Patents and the Global Diffusion of New Drugs (2016)
Working Paper: Patents and the global diffusion of new drugs (2016)
Working Paper: Patents and the Global Diffusion of New Drugs (2014)
Working Paper: Patents and the Global Diffusion of New Drugs (2014)
Working Paper: Patents and the Global Diffusion of New Drugs (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:60450

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