Quantifying the Long-Run Economic and Health Impact of Reduced Intellectual Property Protections for New Drugs

That is the title of a new working paper written by myself, any my FTI Consulting colleagues Sabiha Quddus and Suhail Thahir. The abstract is below. Some policymakers have called for weakening of intellectual property protections for vaccines and other pharmaceutical products, with the aim to reduce the price and improve access to existing medical…

Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation

That is the title of a 2016 NBER chapter by Heidi Williams and the subtitle is “Evidence from Health Care Markets“. Economic theory back to Nordhaus (1969) predicts that intellectual property rights increase the incentive for firms to invest in research and development and likely this would lead to more innovation. Proving these empirically, however,…

“Mr. Biden is wrong”

That was the conclusion of The Economist on his decision to suspend intellectual property protections for the makers of COVID-19 vaccines. In the article “Ten million reasons to vaccinate the world“, they write: Many experts argue that, because some manufacturing capacity is going begging, millions more doses might become available if patent-owners shared their secrets,…

“Child Pornography is Great!”

What is it great for?  Censorship.  A book called The Pirate Organization quotes  a spokesperson for an intellectual property lobby in Denmark: Child pornography is great! It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that we can…

Drugs in Emerging Markets

Governments in emerging markets want their citizens to have better drugs. The big pharmaceutical firms are keen to sell to them. But they are fighting bitterly over the terms. – The Economist. Should emerging markets compel companies to sell drugs to them?  As an economist, I am by nature averse to government coercion.  When people…

Patenting Genes

In general, I am weary of patents (see my Healthcare Manifesto and Against Intellectual Property posts). Sure, they may be useful to spur innovation, but they also harm innovation since one cannot modify or improve a product while there is still a patent. Further, patents generate rent-seeking where inventors spent tons of time wrangling to…