The Market Impacts of Pharmaceutical Product Patents in Developing Countries: Evidence from India

Mark Duggan, Craig Garthwaite and Aparajita Goyal

No 20548, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In 2005, as the result of a World Trade Organization mandate, India began to implement product patents for pharmaceuticals that were compliant with the 1995 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). We combine pharmaceutical product sales data for India with a newly gathered dataset of molecule-linked patents issued by the Indian patent office. Exploiting variation in the timing of patent decisions, we estimate that a molecule receiving a patent experienced an average price increase of just 3-6 percent with larger increases for more recently developed molecules and for those produced by just one firm when the patent system began. Our results also show little impact on quantities sold or on the number of pharmaceutical firms operating in the market.

JEL-codes: I11 L1 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ino, nep-ipr and nep-pr~
Note: DEV EH IO PE PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published as Mark Duggan & Craig Garthwaite & Aparajita Goyal, 2016. "The Market Impacts of Pharmaceutical Product Patents in Developing Countries: Evidence from India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(1), pages 99-135, January.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20548.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Market Impacts of Pharmaceutical Product Patents in Developing Countries: Evidence from India (2016)
Working Paper: The Market Impacts Of Pharmaceutical Product Patents In Developing Countries: Evidence From India (2014)
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:nbr:nberwo:20548

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20548

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().