Prices of Medicines a Case-Study on the impact of the rate-of-return regulation in the United Kingdom

This work carries out an empirical evaluation of the impact of the main mechanism for regulating the prices of medicines in the UK on a variety of pharmaceutical price indices. The empirical evidence shows that the overall impact of the rate of return cap appears to have been slight or even null, and in any case that the impact would differ across therapeutic areas. These empirical findings suggest that the price regulation has managed to encourage UK-based firms diversification in many therapeutic areas.