IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ifs/fistud/v19y1998i3p321-342.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regulating drug prices: where do we go from here?

Author

Listed:
  • Nicolas Bloom
  • John Van Reenen

Abstract

This paper examines the arguments for changing the ways that UK drug prices are regulated. In the UK, NHS pharmaceutical expenditures on branded drugs, currently worth about £3 billion a year, have been regulated by the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS) since 1978. We argue that, in publicly funded healthcare systems, pharmaceutical price regulation is necessitated by a tendency towards excessive government expenditure because of over-prescription and the monopoly power of firms with on-patent drugs. We briefly explain the operation of the PPRS, which is based on rate-of-return regulation, and discuss its merits and drawbacks. We then consider five alternative pricing systems: free pricing, therapeutic benefit pricing, international reference pricing, therapeutic reference pricing and RPI - X price regulation. However, we reject all these alternatives in favour of a reformed PPRS. We suggest three potential reforms of the PPRS: an RPI - X cost allowance if feasible or a widening of the rate-of-return bands otherwise; the introduction of a marketing innovation allowance; and greater regulatory transparency.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicolas Bloom & John Van Reenen, 1998. "Regulating drug prices: where do we go from here?," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 19(3), pages 321-342, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:ifs:fistud:v:19:y:1998:i:3:p:321-342
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ifs.org.uk/fs/articles/bloom_aug98.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Drummond, Michael & Jonsson, Bengt & Rutten, Frans, 1997. "The role of economic evaluation in the pricing and reimbursement of medicines," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 199-215, June.
    2. Martin Cave;Adrian Towse, 1997. "Regulating Prices Paid by the NHS for Medicines Supplied by the UK-Based Pharmaceutical Industry," Briefing 000427, Office of Health Economics.
    3. James D. Adams & Adam B. Jaffe, 1996. "Bounding the Effects of R&D: An Investigation Using Matched Establishment-Firm Data," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 27(4), pages 700-721, Winter.
    4. Colin Mayer & John Vickers, 1996. "Profit-sharing regulation: an economic appraisal," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 1-18, February.
    5. Tirole, Jean, 1986. "Procurement and Renegotiation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(2), pages 235-259, April.
    6. Patricia Danzon, 1997. "Trade and Price Differentials for Pharmaceuticals: Policy Options," Monograph 000430, Office of Health Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Iain M. Cockburn & Jean O. Lanjouw & Mark Schankerman, 2016. "Patents and the Global Diffusion of New Drugs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(1), pages 136-164, January.
    2. Gorecki, Paul K. & Nolan, Anne & Brick, Aoife & Lyons, Seán, 2012. "Pharmaceuticals Delivery in Ireland. Getting a Bigger Bang for the Buck," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number RS24.
    3. Freemantle, Nick, 1999. "Does the UK National Health Service need a fourth hurdle for pharmaceutical reimbursement to encourage the more efficient prescribing of pharmaceuticals?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 255-265, March.
    4. Jommi, Claudio & Paruzzolo, Silvia, 2007. "Public administration and R&D localisation by pharmaceutical and biotech companies: A theoretical framework and the Italian case-study," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 117-130, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jose Luis Lima R & Andres Gomez Lobo, 2004. "Good Regulatory Lags for Price Cap and Rolling Cap contracts," Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings 278, Econometric Society.
    2. David Hawdon & Lester C. Hunt & Paul Levine & Neil Rickman, 2007. "Optimal sliding scale regulation: an application to regional electricity distribution in England and Wales," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(3), pages 458-485, July.
    3. Martin Cave;Adrian Towse, 1997. "Regulating Prices Paid by the NHS for Medicines Supplied by the UK-Based Pharmaceutical Industry," Briefing 000427, Office of Health Economics.
    4. Rodrigo M. S. Moita & Claudio Paiva, 2013. "Political Price Cycles in Regulated Industries: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 94-121, February.
    5. Carrión-Flores, Carmen E. & Innes, Robert, 2010. "Environmental innovation and environmental performance," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 27-42, January.
    6. Lau, Stephanie, 2011. "Investment incentives in bilateral trading," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 538-552.
    7. Surajeet Chakravarty & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Construction Contracts (or “How to Get the Right Building at the Right Price?”)," CESifo Working Paper Series 1714, CESifo.
    8. Bassanini, Anna & Pouyet, Jerome, 2005. "Strategic choice of financing systems in regulated and interconnected industries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2-3), pages 233-259, February.
    9. Strausz, Roland, 2006. "Deterministic versus stochastic mechanisms in principal-agent models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 128(1), pages 306-314, May.
    10. Zhaohui Yan & Mingli Wang & Yumeng Sun & Zihui Nan, 2023. "The Impact of Research and Development Investment on Total Factor Productivity of Animal Husbandry Enterprises: Evidence from Listed Companies in China," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-21, September.
    11. Philippe Choné & Laurent Flochel & Anne Perrot, 1999. "Allocating and Funding Universal Service Obligations in a Competitive Network Market," Working Papers 99-55, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    12. Juan Pablo Montero, 1998. "Optimal Opt-in "Climate" Contracts," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 1, pages 363-384, November.
    13. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2012. "Public goods and the hold-up problem under asymmetric information," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 642-645.
    14. Hyun Park & Apostolis Philippopoulos & Vangelis Vassilatos, 2003. "On the Optimal Size of Public Sector under Rent-Seeking competition from State Coffers," CESifo Working Paper Series 991, CESifo.
    15. Carlino, Gerald & Kerr, William R., 2015. "Agglomeration and Innovation," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 349-404, Elsevier.
    16. Gonzalez, P., 1999. "Specific Investment, Absence of Commitment and Observability," Papers 99-03, Laval - Recherche en Energie.
    17. Wolfgang Keller, 2002. "Geographic Localization of International Technology Diffusion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 120-142, March.
    18. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2006. "Information Gathering, Transaction Costs, and the Property Rights Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 422-434, March.
    19. François MARECHAL, 2003. "Should we base procurement rules on the competition of linear incentive contracts ?," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 03.07, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    20. Pedro de Faria & Francisco Lima, 2012. "Interdependence and spillovers: is firm performance affected by others’ innovation activities?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(36), pages 4765-4775, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L5 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy
    • L6 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing
    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ifs:fistud:v:19:y:1998:i:3:p:321-342. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emma Hyman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifsssuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.