White seniors report better health than Black seniors in urban areas in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This is the case even after controlling for baseline health conditions and several demographic, socio-economic and family support characteristics. Furthermore, adjusted racial disparities in self-reported...

This paper models how the evolving field of pharmacogenomics (PG), which is the science of using genomic markers to predict drug response, may impact drug development times, attrition rates, costs, and the future returns to research and development (R&D). While there still remains an abundance...

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drug advisory committee members sometimes have financial interests tied to drug companies. Congress and the public have become concerned that these financial interests lead to conflicts of interest. They conclude that the conflicts bias committee...

This paper uses national data for the period 1960 to 2000 to estimate an aggregate private consumer demand for pharmaceuticals in the U.S. The estimated demand curve is then used to simulate the value of consumer surplus gains from a drug price control regime that holds drug price increases to...

EU countries closely regulate pharmaceutical prices whereas the U.S. does not. This paper shows how price constraints affect the profitability, stock returns, and Ramp;D spending of EU and U.S. firms. Compared to EU firms, U.S. firms are more profitable, earn higher stock returns, and spend more...

Political pressure in the United States is again building to constrain pharmaceutical prices either directly or through legalized reimportation of lower-priced pharmaceuticals from foreign countries. This study uses the Clinton Administration's Health Security Act (HSA) of 1993 as a natural...

This paper offers an empirical test of ownership mix efficiency in the U.S. hospital services industry. The test compares the benefits of quality assurance with the costs from the attenuation of property rights that result from an increased presence of nonprofit organizations. The empirical...

The biotechnology industry has been an engine of innovation for the U.S. healthcare system and, more generally, the U.S. economy. It is by far the most research intensive industry in the U.S. In our analyses in the current paper, for example, we find that, over the past 25 years, average Ramp;D...

Comparing the safety of prescription drugs over time is difficult due to the paucity of reliable quantitative measures of drug safety. Both the academic literature and popular press have focused on drug withdrawals as a proxy for breakdowns in the drug safety system. This metric, however, is...

This paper offers an empirical test of ownership mix efficiency in the U.S. nursing home industry. We test to compare the benefits of quality assurance with the costs from the attenuation of property rights that result from an increased presence of nonprofit organizations. The empirical results...