The pharmaceutical industry accounts for a substantial chunk of the US economy's research and development investments, which have resulted in significant medical breakthroughs. At the same time, the costs of pharmaceutical products continue to rise, as does pressure to adopt direct or indirect controls on pharmaceutical prices. We review the economics literature on the pharmaceutical industry, focusing particularly on its positive and normative implications for the innovation, pricing, and marketing decisions of pharmaceutical firms. We discuss the major achievements of, and persistent gaps in, the literature, along with lessons for policy.

By influencing the size and bargaining power of private insurers, public subsidization of private health insurance may project effects beyond the subsidized population. We test for such spillovers by analyzing how increases in insurer size resulting from the implementation of Medicare Part D affected drug prices negotiated in the non-Medicare commercial market. On average, Part D lowered prices for commercial enrollees by 3.7%. The external commercial market savings amount to $1.5 billion per year, which, if passed to consumers, approximates the internal cost-savings of newly-insured subsidized beneficiaries. If retained by insurers, it corresponds to a 5% average increase in profitability.

This paper analyzes how markets for old-age care respond to the aging of populations. We consider how the biological forces which govern the stocks of frail and healthy persons in a population interact with economic forces which govern the demand and supply for labor-intensive care.... We test our predictions empirically using state- and county-level evidence on the U.S. market for long-term care in nursing homes over the last three decades. (EXCERPT)

Welfare-Enhancing Technological Change and the Growth of Obesity by Darius Lakdawalla, Tomas Philipson and Jay Bhattacharya. Published in volume 95, issue 2, pages 253-257 of American Economic Review, May 2005

Recent HIV treatment breakthroughs have lowered HIV mortality in the United States, but have also coincided with increased HIV incidence. We argue that these trends are causally linked, because new treatments have improved health and survival for the HIV +, increased their sexual activity, and thus facilitated HIV's spread. Using variation in state-level Medicaid eligibility rules as an instrument for HIV treatment, we find that treating HIV + individuals more than doubles their number of sex partners. A change of this magnitude would increase infection risk by at least 44 percent for the HIV-negative and likely have lowered their expected welfare.