Trials, Tricks and Transparency: How Disclosure Rules Affect Clinical Knowledge

Matthias Dahm, Paula González and Nicolás Porteiro

No 08.02, Working Papers from Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics

Abstract: Scandals of selective reporting of clinical trial results by pharmaceutical firms have underlined the need for more transparency in clinical trials. We provide a theoretical framework which reproduces incentives for selective reporting and yields three key implications concerning regulation. First, a compulsory clinical trial registry complemented through a voluntary clinical trial results database can implement full transparency (the existence of all trials as well as their results is known). Second, full transparency comes at a price. It has a deterrence effect on the incentives to conduct clinical trials, as it reduces the firms' gains from trials. Third, in principle, a voluntary clinical trial results database without a compulsory registry is a superior regulatory tool; but we provide some qualified support for additional compulsory registries when medical decision-makers cannot anticipate correctly the drug companies' decisions whether to conduct trials.

Keywords: pharmaceutical firms; strategic information transmission; clinical trials; registries; results databases; scientific knowledge. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 I18 L15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2008-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-knm
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http://www.upo.es/serv/bib/wps/econ0802.pdf First version, 2008 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Trials, tricks and transparency: How disclosure rules affect clinical knowledge (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pab:wpaper:08.02

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