I examine the impact of pharmaceutical innovation, as measured by the vintage (world launch year) of prescription drugs used, on longevity using longitudinal, country-level data on 30 developing and high-income countries during the period 2000-2009. I control for fixed country and year effects,...

We investigate the effect of the vintage (year of FDA approval) of the prescription drugs used by an individual on his or her survival and medical expenditure. When we only control for age, sex, and interview year, we estimate that a one-year increase in drug vintage increases life expectancy by...

Importation of drugs into the U.S. would result in a decline in U.S. drug prices. The purpose of this paper is to assess the consequences of importation for new drug development. A simple theoretical model of drug development suggests that the elasticity of innovation with respect to the...

This study examines the effect of changes in the vintage distribution of cardiovascular system drugs on hospitalization and mortality due to cardiovascular disease using longitudinal country-level data. The vintage of a drug is the first year in which it was marketed anywhere in the world. We...

We perform an econometric analysis of the effect of new drug launches on longevity, using data from the IMS Health Drug Launches database and the WHO Mortality Database. Our data cover virtually all of the diseases borne by people in 52 countries during the period 1982-2001, and enable us to...

We update and extend our previous study of the effect of drug age -- years since FDA approval -- on total medical expenditure, in several respects. The estimates indicate that, in the entire population, a reduction in the age of drugs utilized reduces non-drug expenditure 7.2 times as much as it...

We estimate the medical cost per life-year gained from increased utilization of HIV drugs by estimating the impact of increased drug utilization on the life expectancy and drug and hospital expenditure of HIV/AIDS patients, using aggregate (U.S. national-level) data for the period 1982-2001. We...

Only about one third of the approximately 80 drugs currently used to treat cancer had been approved when the war on cancer was declared in 1971. We assess the contribution of pharmaceutical innovation to the increase in cancer survival rates in a differences in differences' framework, by...

With substantial fixed costs of drug development, more common conditions can support more products. If additional pharmaceutical products are beneficial, they will attract greater consumption and promote better health, e.g. greater longevity. We ask how market size measured by condition...

This paper presents an econometric analysis of the effect of changes in the quantity and type of pharmaceuticals prescribed by physicians in outpatient visits on rates of hospitalization, surgical procedure, mortality, and related variables. It examines the statistical relationship across...