Background: Market authorization does not guarantee patient access to any given drug. This is particularly true for costly orphan drugs because access depends primarily on co-payments, reimbursement policies and prices. The objective of this article is to identify differences in the availability...

Multinational pharmaceutical corporations are searching for means to broaden their capacity for drug development while decreasing costs. Pharmaceutical firms in India and China are increasingly forging partnerships with these corporations to gain revenue and to develop their own expertise. These...

We consider how patent rights and price regulation affect whether new drugs are marketed in a country, and how quickly. The analysis covers a large sample of 68 countries at all income levels and includes all drug launches over the period 1982-2002. It uses newly compiled information on legal...