Despite their importance to the supply of prescription drugs, there has been limited research on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and their vertical relationships to insurers and drug manufacturers. This paper provides an overview of the current state of research on this topic, motivates why...

In a pervasive but controversial practice, drug firms frequently make monetary or in-kind payments to physicians in the course of promoting prescription drugs. We use a federal database on the universe of such interactions between 2013 and 2015 linked to prescribing behavior in Medicare Part D....

Home-delivered prescriptions have no delivery charge and lower copayments than prescriptions picked up at a pharmacy. Nevertheless, when home delivery is offered on an opt-in basis, the take-up rate is only 6%. We study a program that makes active choice of either home delivery or pharmacy...

This paper develops a new method for identifying econometric models with partially latent covariates. Such data structures arise naturally in industrial organization and labor economics settings where data are collected using an "input-based sampling" strategy, e.g., if the sampling unit is one...

In the U.S., pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) manage prescription drug purchases for payers. Firms selling branded pharmaceuticals bid for preferred slots on the PBM's formulary by offering rebates off of list price. We find that PBMs enhance efficiency, but the gains do not accrue to consumers...

In markets where consumers seek expert advice regarding purchases, firms seek to influence experts, raising concerns about biased advice. Assessing firm-expert interactions requires identifying their causal impact on demand, amidst frictions like market power. We study pharmaceutical firms'...

Selective contracting is an increasingly popular tool for reducing health care costs, but these savings must be weighed against consumer surplus losses from restricted access. In both public and private prescription drug insurance plans, issuers utilize preferred pharmacy networks to reduce drug...

Increased competition from the internet has raised concerns about the quality of prescription drugs sold online. Given the pressure from the Department of Justice, Google agreed to ban pharmacies not certified by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) from sponsored search...

This paper provides the first quantitative economic models of pharmacy benefit management regulation. The price-theoretic models allow for various market frictions and imperfections including market power, coordination costs, tax distortions, and incomplete innovation incentives. A rigorous...