This paper provides an overview on 18 papers presented at a Stanford University conference on the Asian pharmaceutical industries. It begins by putting the contributions and growth of individual national industries in quantitative perspective. Several substantive issues are then addressed: (1)...

This article, written for the forthcoming Handbook of the Economics of Technical Change, surveys the costs, risks, and challenges encountered in the discovery and development of superior new pharmaceuticals. The changing methods by which drugs are discovered, the links between companies and...