We analyse how a patent-holding pharmaceutical firm may strategically use advertising of existing drugs to affect R&D investments in new (differentiated) drugs, and thereby affect the probability distribution of future market structures in the industry. Within a fairly general model framework, we derive exact conditions for advertising and R&D being substitute strategies for the incumbent firm and show that it may overinvest in advertising to reduce the incentive for an entrant to invest in R&D, thereby reducing the probability of a new product on the market. In a more specific setting of informative advertising, we show that such overinvestment incentives are always present, and that more generous patent protection implies that a larger share of the patent rent is spent on marketing, relative to R&D.
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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 2433.
Find related papers by JEL classification: I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets O31 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Scherer, F.M., 2000.
"The pharmaceutical industry,"
Handbook of Health Economics,
in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1297-1336
Elsevier.
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