Prices of medicines: a case-study on the impact of the rate-of-return regulation in the United Kingdom

[eng] This work carries out an empirical evaluation of the impact of the main mechanism for regulating the prices of medicines in the UK on a variety of pharmaceutical price indices. The empirical evidence shows that the overall impact of the rate of return cap appears to have been slight or even null, and in any case that the impact would differ across therapeutic areas. These empirical findings suggest that the price regulation has managed to encourage UK-based firms diversification in many therapeutic areas.[spa] Este trabajo lleva a cabo una evaluación empírica del impacto del principal mecanismo de regulación de los precios de los medicamentos en el Reino Unido sobre un conjunto de índices de precios farmacéuticos entre 1980 y 1994. La evidencia empírica muestra que la incidencia de la tasa de retorno máxima sobre los precios ha sido muy moderada o nula y que, en cualquier caso, el impacto difiere entre áreas terapéuticas. Estos resultados empíricos sugieren que la regulación de precios ha fomentado la diversificación de las empresas farmacéuticas radicadas en el Reino Unido en numerosas áreas terapéuticas

Drug price differentials caused by de-listing and price cap policies

This paper analyses the behaviour of pharmaceutical companies that face the threat of having their drugs excluded from reimbursement and the markets characterised also by price caps. We conclude that price elasticity of demand and cost differentials cause the price discounts which drug firms offer to health care organisations. Additionally, we conclude that price cap regulations affect the time path of prices, resulting in higher prices for new products and lower prices for old products.Aquest treball analitza el comportament dels laboratoris farmacèutics que s'enfronten a l'amenaça de veure els seus productes exclusos de les prestacions farmacèutiques i que operen en mercats en els que existiesen preus màxims. El treball conclou que l'elasticitat al preu de la demanda i les diferències de cost fan que els laboratoris ofereixin descomptes a les organitzacions que presten els serveis sanitaris. A més, el treball conclou que la regulació de preus màxims afecta a la trajectòria dels preus al llarg del temps, en forma de majors preus pels productes nous i menors preus pels productes vells

Prices of Medicines a Case-Study on the impact of the rate-of-return regulation in the United Kingdom

This work carries out an empirical evaluation of the impact of the main mechanism for regulating the prices of medicines in the UK on a variety of pharmaceutical price indices. The empirical evidence shows that the overall impact of the rate of return cap appears to have been slight or even null, and in any case that the impact would differ across therapeutic areas. These empirical findings suggest that the price regulation has managed to encourage UK-based firms diversification in many therapeutic areas.public health, government expenditures and health, regulation, government policy, innovation and invention: processes and incentives

Endogenous Antitrust: Cross-Country Evidence on the Impact of Competition-Enhancing Policies on Productivity

This paper presents empirical evidence regarding the effect of simultaneous antitrust and trade policy on productivity. We find that treating antitrust across countries as an exogenous policy overestimates the impact of competition on productivity by as much as 18%.Antitrust,Productivity,Political economy

Assessing excess profits from different entry regulations

Entry regulations affecting professional services such as pharmacies are common practice in many European countries. We assess the impact of entry regulations on profits estimating a structural model of entry using the information provided by a policy experiment. We use the case of different regional policies governing the opening of new pharmacies in Spain to show that structural models of entry ought to be estimated with data from policy experiments to pin down how entry regulations change payoffs functions of the incumbents. Contrary to the public interest rationales, regulations are not boosting only small town pharmacies payoffs nor increasing all pharmacies payoffs alike. The gains from regulations are very unevenly distributed,suggesting that private interests are shaping the current mix of entry and markup regulations.Entry, regulation, professional services

Securing dynamic itineraries for mobile agent applications

In this paper we present a novel mechanism for the protection of dynamic itineraries for mobile agent applications. Itineraries that are decided as the agent goes are essential in complex applications based on mobile agents, but no approach has been presented until now to protect them. We have conceived a cryptographic scheme for shielding dynamic itineraries from tampering, impersonation and disclosure. By using trust strategically, our scheme provides a balanced trade-off between flexibility and security. Our protection scheme has been thought always bearing in mind a feasible implementation, and thus facilitates the development of applications that make use of it. An example application based on a real healthcare scenario is also presented to show its operation

Mixed oligopoly and predatory public firms

In this paper, we propose a mixed duopoly model in which the public company aims to maximize a weighted function of profits and a function of its production scale. We found that if the weight to the scale of production is high the public firms may exclude its rivals from the market (exercising predatory prices). We also find that the profit sacrifice by the public firm to get this exclusion is higher if there are marked differences between the cost efficiency of private and public firm