Rising costs in pharmaceutical expenditure have become a major concern for policy makers in Germany over the last years. Therefore the pharmaceutical market in Germany has been increasingly targeted by different kinds of regulations, focussing both on the supply and the demand side, using price,...

This paper discusses the influence of recent health care reform acts in Germany on choice, guidance and access from the perspective of patients, insured, insurers, and health care providers. Particular emphasis is put on health policy reforms since 2004, i.e. the Social Health Insurance...

Many countries with national health care providers and health insurances regulate the market for pharmaceuticals to steer drug demand and to control expenses. For example, they introduce reference pricing or tiered co-payments to enhance drug substitution and competition. Since 2006, Germany...

We investigate the welfare impact of parallel imports using a large panel data set containing monthly information on sales, ex-factory prices, and further product characteristics for all 700 anti-diabetic drugs sold in Germany between 2004 and 2010. We estimate a two-stage nested logit model of...

We investigate the welfare impact of parallel imports using a large panel data set containing monthly information on sales, ex-factory prices, and further product characteristics for all 700 anti-diabetic drugs sold in Germany between 2004 and 2010. We estimate a two-stage nested logit model of...

This paper evaluates the impact of reference pricing on prices and co-payments in the (German) market for off-patent pharmaceuticals. We present a theoretical model with price-sensitive and loyal consumers that shows that a decrease in the reference price affects the consumers' co-payments in a...