Transaction costs and pharmaceutical clinical research: a Data Envelopment Analysis approach

Taking human experimentation into account, this work aims at estimating the relationship between transaction costs, which are related to the protection system of patients’ rights, and localization of pharmaceutical industry’s testing phase. Assuming that the competitiveness of the protection system is based on the time required to obtain an authorization or an experimental activity, pharmaceutical clinical research should be positively affected by a process aimed at internalizing the review process, if efficient. By analyzing said system with operational research, this paper concludes suggesting the potentiality of a competitive system of reviewers, that is to say, the efficiency of that internalization process is performed by medical centers in which the experimental treatments are proposed to subjects.