This study investigates the returns to R&D for 100 new drugs introduced into the United States during the decade of the 1970s. In contrast to prior studies, it incorporates several significant structural changes that have occurred in the pharmaceutical industry during the 1980s. These include...

IN 1984, Congress enacted a new law that greatly affected the economicsof the pharmaceutical industry in the United States. It has been characterizedas the most important legislation affecting competition in the pharmaceuticalindustry since the 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendments to theFood and Drug...

The pharmaceutical industry has been among the most innovative while being one of the most highly regulated industries in the United States. Government regulation of pharmaceutical product quality started in 19061 and has evolved into a stringent system of premarket controls over new drug...

This paper examines the rationale for intellectual property protection in the development of new pharmaceutical products. Prior survey studies of R&D executives have found that patents play a more critical role in appropriating the benefits of innovation in pharmaceuticals compared to other high...

Previously published research by two of the authors found that returns on R&D for drugs introduced into the market in the 1970s and 1980s were highly skewed and that the top decile of new drugs accounted for close to half the overall market value. In the 1990s, there have been significant...

This paper considers the role of intellectual property rights in the development of and access to new pharmaceuticals. A number of studies have found patents are significantly more important to pharmaceutical firms in appropriating the benefits from innovation compared to other high tech...