This paper analyses the competitive effects of informative advertising. The seminal work by Grossman and Shapiro (1984) show that informative advertising results in lower prices and that firms may benefit from advertising restrictions. A crucial assumption in their model is that captive...

In this paper we study the effect of reference pricing on pharmaceutical prices and expenditures when generic entry is endogenously determined. We develop a Salop-type model where a brand-name producer competes with generic producers in terms of prices. In the market there are two types of...

In this paper we study the impact of reference pricing (RP) on entry of generic firms in the pharmaceutical market. For given prices, RP increases generic firms' expected profit, but since RP also stimulates price competition, the impact on generic entry is theoretically ambiguous. In order to...

Policy makers use reference pricing to curb pharmaceutical expenditures by reducing coverage of expensive branded drugs. In a theoretical analysis we show that the net effect of reference pricing is generally ambiguous when accounting for entry by generic producers. Reference pricing shifts...

We study the impact of regulation on competition between brand-names and generics and pharmaceutical expenditures using a unique policy experiment in Norway, where reference pricing (RP) replaced price cap regulation in 2003 for a sub-sample of off-patent products. First, we construct a vertical...

We study the relationship between regulatory regimes and pharmaceutical firms' pricing strategies using a unique policy experiment from Norway, which in 2003 introduced a reference price (RP) system called "index pricing" for a sub-sample of off-patent pharmaceuticals, replacing the existing...

We consider a therapeutic market with potentially three pharmaceutical firms. Two of the firms offer horizontally differentiated brand-name drugs. One of the brand-name drugs is a new treatment under patent protection that will be introduced if the profits are sufficient to cover the entry...