Characteristics of Demand for Pharmaceutical Products: an Examination of four Cephalosporins

S Ellison, Iain Cockburn, Zvi Griliches and Jerry Hausman

Working papers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics

Abstract: In this paper we model demand for four cephalosporins and compute own- and cross-price elasticities between branded and generic versions of the four drugs. We model demand as a multistage budgeting problem, and argue that such a model is appropriate to the multistage nature of the purchase of pharmaceutical products, in particular, the prescribing and dispensing stages. We find quite high elasticities between generic substitutes and also significant elasticities between some therapeutic substitutes.

Keywords: DEMAND; PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Characteristics of Demand for Pharmaceutical Products: An Examination of Four Cephalosporins (1997)
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:mit:worpap:96-24

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT), DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, 50 MEMORIAL DRIVE CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS 02142 USA

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT), DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, 50 MEMORIAL DRIVE CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS 02142 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Linda Woodbury ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).