Crestor, an important but controversial cholesterol-lowering drug, is contraindicated for use by senior and Asian patients. In this paper, we exploit this fact and a unique doctor-level prescription and advertising (detailing, to be exact) exposure data for statin drugs to examine the hypothesis...

In this paper, we investigate the change in advertising patterns of competing pharmaceutical firms in the short period after a new entrant, Crestor, is petitioned to be removed from the Statin drug market. Using physician-level data, we find that Crestor’s main competitor, Lipitor, increases...