The US government has embarked on a trade strategy to address alleged free riding by raising patented prescription drug prices abroad. This strategy is unwise and dangerous. It is likely to 'succeed' in low and middle income countries, desperate to sign a bilateral trade agreement with the US....

While neoclassical economic theory suggests that arbitrage will undermine global differential pricing of pharmaceuticals, the empirical results are more complex. Pharmaceutical regulation, IP laws, global trade agreements, and company policies support differential pricing despite the pressure of...

Trade agreement negotiations are routinely cloaked in secrecy, a model that may have suited the Eighteenth Century, but has no place in modern democracies. Transparency deficits have led to capture by powerful industries, sometimes to the detriment of public health. This is a standard account of...

Canadians pay very high prices for generic drugs compared to international norms. The reason is not inefficient or noncompetitive generic drug companies, but provincial government pricing and insurance policies that are distorting the market. This paper by Professor Aidan Hollis, an expert in...

Prompt and affordable access to essential medicines is a component of almost all domestic and global public health models. As is now well known, the availability and costs of both brand and generic drugs is a function of traditional patent law incentives. Less known, however, is that generic...