an induced innovation externality. This alternative mechanism, by contrast, causes people to devote an inefficiently high … level of self-protection. As an empirical example of this externality, we analyze the innovation induced by the obesity … epidemic. Obesity is associated with an increase in the incidence of many diseases. The induced innovation hypothesis is that …

outcome. The totality of possible outcomes drives the national innovation system and the returns to a particular successful … required to motivate investment attempting to turn them into an innovation. The alternative to a valuable proprietary … innovation is not the same innovation freely available but the unchanged generic technology. Growth is concentrated in any …

opportunities. The paper also provides new evidence on induced pharmaceutical innovation. In both cases we use the change in the … demographic structure of the market (measured by age structure and obesity prevalence) to test the induced innovation hypothesis … pharmaceutical innovation responds to aging- and obesity-induced changes in potential market size …