The impact of patent protection on biomedical innovation has been a controversial issue. Although a "medical anti-commons" has been predicted due to a proliferation of patents on upstream technologies, evidence to test these concerns is only now emerging. However, most industrial surveys that...

The year 2005 marks the end of transition period for many developing countries with competent pharmaceutical sectors that competed in supplying generic versions of patented drugs to LDCs before, thereby inducing price competition and enhancing access to medicines. In a post-2005 scenario, the...

We analyse research collaboration in the Italian biotechnological sector using bibliometric data. We build a database of all scientific publications of Italian biotechnology firms over the period 1990 to may 2006 and we provide evidence on the institutional and geographical nature of research...

Considerando la relevancia de la biotecnología en la industria mundial y su impacto en el crecimiento económico, este ensayo se centra en analizar el uso de la información de patentes biotecnológicas para determinar las tendencias de desarrollo tecnológico y como indicador de innovación,...

We develop a model of scientific creativity and test it in the field of rare diseases. Our model is based on the results of an in-depth case study of the Rett syndrome. Archival analysis, bibliometric techniques and expert surveys are combined with network analysis to identify the most creative...

This paper quantifies the relationship between market size and innovation in the pharmaceutical industry using improved, and newer, methods and data. We find positive significant elasticities of innovation to expected market size with a point estimate under our preferred specification of 0.23....

While most economists believe that public scientific research fuels industry innovation and economic growth, systematic evidence supporting this relationship is surprisingly limited. In a recent study, Acemoglu and Linn (2004) identified market size as a significant driver of drug innovation in...

Interactive learning, particularly between firms and public research organizations (PRO), nurtures the dynamics of systems of innovation. Limited interaction contributes to explain poor performance in R&D and ultimately, in innovation by developing countries. But why this is so? Based on...

The United States has trade deals with pharmaceutical terms that go beyond the requirements in World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements with 17 countries. Some are more than a decade old, but just two studies have ever assessed how those trade agreements affected prices in practice. This...

This report is from a Cambridge Workshop on the openness of large bioresources in synthetic biology and genomics (e.g. the 100,000 Genomes Project), held on 28 January 2016. Research in SB and Gx depends on the use of collections of tissue and data, commonly known as bioresources. Substantial...