Speaker:Assistant Professor of History (Department of Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Host:Professor Ma Xiangjun (China Institute of Economics, Liaoning University)
Guest introduction:Professor Ma Xiangjun (China Institute of Economics, Liaoning University)
Time:Wednesday, April 24, 2024, 9:30-11:00 (Beijing time)
Location:Conference Room, 1st Floor, Wuzhou Park, Chongshan Campus, Liaoning University
Online Venue:Tencent Meeting: 422-670-019
Language:Chinese/English
abstract：
This paper investigates the impact of public health insurance on pharmaceutical development in China. While extensive evidence from developed countries indicates a positive relationship between market size and pharmaceutical innovation, it remains unclear whether and how policy-induced market incentives affect pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) in developing countries. Using novel data on clinical trials and marketing applications for new drugs in China from 2007 to 2020, we measure pharmaceutical innovation and imitation separately. By exploiting the quasi-experimental setting of a large-scale public insurance program for catastrophic diseases in China---the Critical Illness Insurance Program (CII)---we find that the number of new clinical trials for the affected diseases did not increase in response to the policy change. However, the CII is associated with a significant increase in new generic drug marketing applications. Moreover, the increase in generic drug applications is driven by an increase in duplicative generic and chemical drugs rather than first-in-China and biologic drugs requiring relatively higher technology capacities. Our findings underscore the importance of the relationship between imitation and innovation in understanding policy-induced incentives for pharmaceutical R&D in developing countries.
Introduction to the speaker: History, Assistant Professor of Economics at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Virginia, and Deputy Director of the Zhejiang University The Chinese University of Hong Kong Digital Economy Joint Research Center. The main research area is industrial organization and applied microeconomics, with research topics including empirical analysis of digital economy, platform enterprises and advertising, and pharmaceutical industry. Hosted three general and youth projects funded by the Hong Kong Research and Development Council, and published research results in journals such as the Journal of Development Economics. Has won the Best Paper Award at the 2019 China Forum on Law and Economics and the Pioneer Award in Digital Economy Research in 2022.
