| Title |
Is medicines parallel trade ‘regulatory arbitrage’?
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
International Journal of Health Economics and Management, September 2016
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s10754-016-9199-z |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Joan Costa-Font |
| Abstract |
Parallel trade (PT) is a phenomenon that takes place at the distribution level, when a patented product is diverted from the official distribution chain to another one where it competes as a parallel distributor. Although some research regards PT in Europe as a 'common' form of arbitrage, there are reasons to believe that it is a type of 'regulatory arbitrage' that does not necessarily produce equivalent welfare effects. We draw upon a unique dataset that contains source country records of parallel imported medicine sales to the Netherlands for one therapeutic group (statins), that accounts for 5 % of the market at the time of study and it faced no generic competition. We estimate precise differences in prices and statutory distribution margins for each source country/product and, examine whether they drive parallel import flows using a gravity specification and an instrumental variable strategy. Our findings reveal that parallel imports are driven by cross-country differences in statutory distribution margins in addition to price differences, consistently with the hypothesis of PT being a type of 'regulatory arbitrage'. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profile of 1 X user who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 1 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 1 | 100% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 34 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 34 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Researcher | 6 | 18% |
| Student > Master | 4 | 12% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 3 | 9% |
| Other | 3 | 9% |
| Student > Bachelor | 2 | 6% |
| Other | 3 | 9% |
| Unknown | 13 | 38% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Economics, Econometrics and Finance | 7 | 21% |
| Social Sciences | 4 | 12% |
| Business, Management and Accounting | 3 | 9% |
| Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science | 3 | 9% |
| Medicine and Dentistry | 2 | 6% |
| Other | 4 | 12% |
| Unknown | 11 | 32% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 24 September 2016.
All research outputs
#19,383,782
of 23,857,313 outputs
Outputs from International Journal of Health Economics and Management
#97
of 104 outputs
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#249,466
of 325,373 outputs
Outputs of similar age from International Journal of Health Economics and Management
#2
of 2 outputs
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