Medical providers' profit considerations might take priority over their patients' needs in Taiwan because they are allowed to both dispense and prescribe medications. I examine this problem in the demand of the anti-diabetic drugs market using information from millions of claims. Empirical...

Physicians’ generic pharmaceutical adoption involves not only patients’ and insurance payers’ cost, but also their own interests. This study examines this double agency problem for physicians by using Taiwanese data because two of its institutional features: First, patients and physicians...

This paper analyzes the consequences of parallel trade on health care systems in a two-country model with a vertical distributor relationship. In particular, two cost-sharing systems coinsurance and indemnity insurance are compared with respect to changes in copayments and public health...

On August 30, 2003, the member countries of the WTO adopted the Decision on Implementation of Paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health. This Decision provides flexibility for the export of pharmaceutical products under compulsory license (which flexibility...

WTO adopted the waiver solution in compulsory licensing, beginning from the Doha Declaration to the amendment of TRIPS Agreement, to facilitate access to medicine to the countries lacking manufacturing capacity. This article examines challenges faced by countries while issuing compulsory...

This paper explains how the current architecture of the pharmaceutical markets has created a misalignment of financial incentives and public health that is a central cause of harmful practices. It explores three possible solutions to address that misalignment: taxes, increased financial...

These are neither the best of times nor the worst of times for the pharmaceutical industry, or for global public health. Media reports regarding recent legal developments would suggest that the originator pharmaceutical industry is facing a new and dangerous threat to its long-term welfare,...

Penicillin and other antibiotics were the original wonder drugs and laid the foundation of the modern pharmaceutical industry. Human health significantly improved with the introduction of antibiotics. By 1967, the US Surgeon General declared victory over infectious diseases in the US. But pride...