This article analyzes the individual determinants of acquisition activity and target choices in the pharmaceutical industry over the period 1978-2002. The "innovation gap" hypothesis states that acquiring firms lack promising drug compounds and acquire firms with more promising drug prospects. A...

This paper analyzes American pharmaceutical firms' persistence in innovating prior to the wave of mergers and acquisitions that accompanied the "Biotech revolution". We evaluate the impact of past innovative activity on firms' innovation propensities using a non-linear GMM estimator for...

We examine the impact of pharmaceutical innovation on the longevity of Australians during the period 1995-2003. Due to the government's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, Australia has much better data on drug utilization than most other countries. We find that mean age at death increased more for...

Microeconomic theory implies that the demand for prescription drugs should be inversely related to drug prices and directly related to marketing expenditure. Changes in market structure due to patent expiration or other factors is likely to reduce both the average price of a drug and marketing...

This article considers the determinants of the corporate acquisitions made in the American pharmaceutical industry between 1978 and 2002. We seek to evaluate the robustness of the ?pipeline gap? hypothesis through a larger, more exhaustive sample, and extend it to patent data. In line with the...

This paper analyzes American pharmaceutical firms' persistence in innovating just before the wave of mergers and acquisitions that accompanied the "Biotech revolution". We evaluate the impact of past innovative activity on firms' innovation propensities using a non-linear GMM estimator for...

We provide estimates of the abnormal stock market returns associated with pharmaceutical firms' announcements of technological and regulatory successes in drug development. On the basis of these estimates, we find empirical support for two key features of technological race models. First, we...