Evaluating Pharmaceutical Policy Options

By Kate Ho & Ariel Pakes.

"Our calculations indicate that currently proposed U.S. policies to reduce pharmaceutical prices, though particularly beneficial for low-income and elderly populations, could dramatically reduce firms’ investment in highly welfare-improving R&D. The U.S. subsidizes the worldwide pharmaceutical market. One reason is U.S. prices are higher than elsewhere. If each drug had a single international price across the highest-income OECD countries, and total pharmaceutical firm profits were held fixed, then U.S. prices would fall by half and every other country’s prices would increase (by 28 to 300%). International prices would maintain firms’ R&D incentives and more equitably share the costs of pharmaceutical research."