We examine the impact of publicly funded biomedical research on the in-house research of the for-profit pharmaceutical industry. Qualitative analysis of the history of the discovery and development of a sample of 21 significant drugs, and a program of interviews with senior managers and scientists reveals a complex and often bidirectional relationship between the public and private sectors of the industry, illustrating the difficulties inherent in estimating the rate of return to public support of basic research. This analysis also highlights the importance for private sector firms of maintaining close connections to the upstream' scientific community, which requires them to make significant investments in doing in-house basic research and adopting appropriate internal incentives and procedures. We measure the extent and nature of this connectedness' using data on coauthorship of scientific papers between pharmaceutical company scientists and publicly funded researchers. These measures are significantly correlated with firms' internal organization, as well as their research performance in drug discovery as measured by important patents per research dollar. The size of the estimated impact of connectedness' to private research productivity implies a substantial return to public investments in basic research.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
6018.
Length: Date of creation: Jun 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6018
Note: PR Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
Find related papers by JEL classification: H8 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior
Cited by: (explanations, 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.)