ABSTRACT
Drug development performance is examined using data on clinical research projects of 10 pharmaceutical companies. In contrast to previous work on the discovery phase of pharmaceutical R&D we find a strong correlation between the diversity of firms' development efforts and the success probability of individual projects, but no effect of scale per se. Large firms' superior performance in drug development appears to be driven by returns to scope rather than returns to scale. Scope is confounded with firm fixed effects, however, suggesting an important role for inter-firm differences in the organization and management of the development function.
Subject(s)
Clinical Trials as Topic/economics , Drug Evaluation/economics , Drug Industry/economics , Research Support as Topic/economics , Clinical Trials as Topic/statistics & numerical data , Costs and Cost Analysis , Drug Design , Drug Evaluation/statistics & numerical data , Drug Evaluation/trends , Drug Industry/statistics & numerical data , Drug Industry/trends , Drugs, Investigational/economics , Efficiency , Europe , Humans , Logistic Models , Organizational Innovation , Research Support as Topic/statistics & numerical data , Research Support as Topic/trends , United StatesABSTRACT
We examined the effects on work productivity of treatment with antihistamines in a retrospective study using linked health claims data and daily work output records for a sample of nearly 6000 claims processors at a large insurance company, between 1993 and 1995. We explained the variation in work output depending on the subjects' demographic characteristics, their jobs, and whether they were treated with "sedating" versus "nonsedating" antihistamines for nasal allergies. Differences of up to 13% in productivity were found after the subjects took sedating or nonsedating antihistamines. The observed effect suggests substantial indirect economic costs, which up to now have been largely overlooked because work productivity has proved difficult to measure objectively.
