How does a firm’s market power in existing products affect its incentives to innovate? We explore this fundamental question using granular project-level and firm-level data from the pharmaceutical industry, focusing on a particular mechanism through which incumbent firms maintain their market...

Are IPRs institutions meant to foster innovative activities or conversely to secure appropriation and profitability? Taking stock of a long-term empirical evidence on the pharmaceutical sector in the US, we can hardly support IPRs intended as an innovation rewarding institution. According to our...

To meet the requirements of global competition, the European Union (EU) places particular emphasis on the development of knowledge‑intensive, innovative industries. The pharmaceutical industry, as a high‑tech manufacturing subsection, has a long tradition in Europe. However, the distribution...

Pharmaceutical firms spend billions of dollars to develop the next breakthrough drug and to maintain their market shares. We investigate how pharmaceutical firms use mergers and acquisitions to boost their innovation performance which has been found to result in better performance outcomes....

The Belgian pharmaceutical sector has been accorded a leading role in the attainment of the R&D investment targets which the EU Member States set themselves as part of the Lisbon strategy. To gain a better insight into that sector's research activities, the NBB conducted an ad hoc survey in...

The Belgian pharmaceutical sector has been accorded a leading role in the attainment of the R&D investment targets which the EU Member States set themselves as part of the Lisbon strategy. To gain a better insight into that sector’s research activities, the NBB conducted an ad hoc survey in...

A comparative study is undertaken that explores Chinese and Indian pharmaceutical industries under different patent regimes. It is found that relative to India, which had implemented process patent until 2005, China with a product patent regime since 1993 suffers from both lower drug...

This paper deals with the topic of related R&D and innovation strategies of large firms. We ask what determines the diversity of a firm's product portfolio. More specifically, we try to explain large firms' expansion into new product markets driven by the characteristics of their technological...