We examine trends in the productivity of the pharmaceutical sector over the past three decades. Motivated by Ricardo's insight that productivity and rents are endogenous to demand when inputs are scarce, we examine the industry's aggregate R&D production function. Using exogenous demand shocks...

This paper aims to investigate the effect of knowledge characteristics on the total factor productivity of firms developing drugs in the pharmaceutical industry. We decompose knowledge into knowledge associated with the technological firm portfolio and knowledge related to R&D projects, which...

Lanjouw and Schankerman (2004) proposed that patent quality is a key driver of R&D productivity but did not find supportive evidence for pharmaceuticals. This study revisits this hypothesis using OECD data for the period 1980-2000. It extends the literature in three ways: it develops new R&D...

Recent work linking the adoption of key organizational practices to productivity raises an important question: if adoption increases productivity so dramatically, why does adoption across an industry take so long? This paper explores this question in the context of one particularly interesting...