Markets require informed participants to function efficiently. This paper examines the impact of providing targeted information directly to patients on their purchasing-decisions regarding pharmaceutical drugs. We analyze the effect of informational letters sent by a Swiss health insurer to...

We analyze changes in the willingness to substitute from prescribed pharmaceuticals to more affordable generic equivalents in response to the first experience with a substitution. Using Swedish individual-level data of prescribed and dispensed pharmaceuticals, we employ a dynamic event study and...

This article examines the market power of branded prescription drugs faced with generic competition. Using prescription-level and matched socioeconomic panel data of the entire Swedish population between 2010 and 2016, I provide evidence for the key role of switching costs. A discontinuity...

We analyse how a patent-holding pharmaceutical firm may strategically use advertising of existing drugs to affect R&D investments in new (differentiated) drugs, and thereby affect the probability distribution of future market structures in the industry. Within a fairly general model framework,...

The US and the EU recently introduced regulation to curb the extent of risky off-label drug use. It offers manufacturers a prolongation of patent protection or exclusivity if they invest in pediatric clinical tests. This paper shows that a reinforcement of physician liability for off-label use...

This study seeks to provide evidence for deciding whether or not a pharmaceutical innovation should be included in the benefit list of social health insurance. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted in Germany to measure preferences for modern insulin therapy. Of the 1,100 individuals...

We analyze the impact of national pharmaceutical regulation on the launch delay of new chemical entities approved by the EMEA's centralized procedure. We find that direct price control regimes have a significantly negative impact on the launch timing. These results cannot be found when...

Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) increasingly gain in importance with respect to the supply of pharmaceutical products and frequently use multiple or exclusive rebate contracts to exercise market power. Based on a Hotelling model of horizontal and vertical product differentiation, we...

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...