This paper examines the use of price controls on pharmaceuticals, while controlling for both market structure and of firm (and product) characteristics, in estimating the extent and timing of the launch of new drugs around the world. Price controls are found to have a statistically and quantitatively important effect on pharmaceutical launches. Drugs invented by firms headquartered in countries that use price controls reach fewer markets and take longer to diffuse than products that originate in countries without price controls. Price controls have a non-uniform impact on firms in different countries; in particular, Italian and Japanese firms tend to introduce their products in price controlled markets more quickly than American or British firms. Companies delay launch into price-controlled markets, and are less likely to introduce their products in additional markets after entering a country with price controls. Overall, the results suggest that a country's use of price controls not only has a substantial impact on entry into that market, but into other countries as well.

In this paper we examine generic competition and market exclusivity periods for pharmaceuticals experiencing their initial generic entry between 1995 and 2005. We find that generic competition has increased over several dimensions. First, an increasing number of drugs are subject to generic entry, including drugs with relatively modest annual average sales. Second, drugs with larger sales attract more generic entrants and have shorter market exclusivity periods than smaller selling drugs. Third, blockbuster drugs with annual sales in excess of $1 billion have experienced significant decreases in their market exclusivity periods in recent years. We also find that Hatch-Waxman Act patent challenges have negatively affected market exclusivity periods over the 1995 to 2005 period.

While there is widespread agreement among economists and management scholars that knowledge spillovers exist and have important economic consequences, researchers know substantially less about the "micro mechanisms" of spillovers-about the degree to which they are geographically localized, for example, or about the degree to which spillovers from public institutions are qualitatively different from those from privately owned firms (Jaffe, 1986; Krugman, 1991; Jaffe et al., 1993; Porter, 1990). In this paper we make use of the geographic distribution of the research activities of major global pharmaceutical firms to explore the extent to which knowledge spills over from proximate private and public institutions. Our data and empirical approach allow us to make advances on two dimensions. First, by focusing on spillovers in research productivity (as opposed to manufacturing productivity), we build closely on the theoretical literature on spillovers that suggests that knowledge externalities are likely to have the most immediate impact on the production of ideas (Romer, 1986; Aghion & Howitt, 1997). Second, our data allow us to distinguish spillovers from public research from spillovers from private, or competitively funded research, and to more deeply explore the role that institutions and geographic proximity play in driving knowledge spillovers.

This paper examines the impact and interrelationships between direct-to-consumer (DTC) and physician-oriented marketing on the sales composition of the prescription (Rx) and over-the-counter (OTC) versions of antiulcer and heartburn medications. To understand better the implications for competition of the 1997 Food and Drug Administration's policies regarding DTC marketing, as well as recent Rx-to-OTC switch approvals, we also examine the relationship between order-of-entry effects and marketing intensities. We find spillover effects of marketing for Rx drugs on same-brand OTC versions of the drugs. We also find that the ratio of cumulative marketing intensity (cumulative marketing efforts divided by cumulative sales) in the OTC segment increases monotonically with order of entry. Our regression results show that various marketing demand elasticities depend on order of entry. Our findings document the importance of nonprice competition in the OTC drug market and suggest that the recent deregulation of Rx DTC marketing enhances rivalry and facilitates competition.