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...

Abstract: Die Autoren analysieren den Ordnungsrahmen für den deutschen Apothekenmarkt und die dortigen Konkurrenzbeziehungen. Diese zeichnen sich durch signifikante Wettbewerbsdefizite aus. Ausgehend von dieser Diagnose wird als Therapie das Modell einer Apothekentaxe vorgeschlagen, bei dem die...

Health insurances curb price insensitive behavior and moral hazard of insureds through different types of cost-sharing, such as tiered co-payments or reference pricing. This paper evaluates the effect of newly introduced price limits below which drugs are exempt from co-payments on the pricing...

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...