The goal of the present study is to assess the awarded prices and thus the real level of competition the regional tenders referring to biosimilars in Italy achieved.

By introducing n (1) firms with infinite cross-price elasticity (i.e. generic drugs), we explore the effects of competition on the optimal pricing strategies under a Reference Pricing Scheme (RPS). A two-stage model repeated infinite number of times is presented. When stage 1 is competitive, the...