IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/apandp/v111y2021p336-40.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Private and Social Returns to R&D: Drug Development and Demographics

Author

Listed:
  • Efraim Benmelech
  • Janice Eberly
  • Dimitris Papanikolaou
  • Joshua Krieger

Abstract

Investment in intangible capital such as R&D has increased dramatically since the 1990s. However, productivity growth remains sluggish in recent years. One potential reason is that a significant share of the increase in intangible investment is geared toward consumer products such as pharmaceutical drugs with limited spillovers to productivity. We document that a significant share of R&D spending in the United States is done by pharmaceutical firms and geared to developing drugs for older patients. Increased life expectancy and quality of life for the elderly increases welfare but may not be reflected in estimates of total factor productivity.

Suggested Citation

  • Efraim Benmelech & Janice Eberly & Dimitris Papanikolaou & Joshua Krieger, 2021. "Private and Social Returns to R&D: Drug Development and Demographics," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 111, pages 336-340, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:111:y:2021:p:336-40
    DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20211104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20211104
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20211104.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/pandp.20211104?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Xuelin & Liu, Tong & Taylor, Lucian A., 2023. "Common ownership and innovation efficiency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 475-497.
    2. Faraz Salehi & S. Mohammad J. Mirzapour Al-E-Hashem & S. Mohammad Moattar Husseini & S. Hassan Ghodsypour, 2023. "A bi-level multi-follower optimization model for R&D project portfolio: an application to a pharmaceutical holding company," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 323(1), pages 331-360, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
    • L65 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Chemicals; Rubber; Drugs; Biotechnology; Plastics
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

    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:aea:apandp:v:111:y:2021:p:336-40. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.