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Parallel imports of pharmaceutical products in the European Union

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  • Ganslandt, Mattias
  • Maskus, Keith E.

Abstract

The point of parallel imports of pharmaceuticals is arbitrage between countries with different prices. For several years, an important issue in the European Union (EU) has been the evident conflict between differing price regulations in the member states, on the one hand, and the consequences of parallel trade, on the other. In the EU, so long as the manufacturer has placed the good on the market voluntarily, the principle of free movement of goods allows individuals, or firms within the EU to trade goods across borders, without the consent of the producer. In this context, the authors study the effects of parallel trade in the pharmaceutical industry. They develop a model in which an original manufacturer competes in its home market with parallel-importing firms. The two key hypotheses in their theoretical analysis are these: First, if the potential for parallel imports is unlimited, the manufacturer chooses deterrence, and international prices converge. Second, with endogenously limited arbitrage, the manufacturing firm accommodates, and the price in the home market falls as the volume of parallel trade rises. The authors test their hypotheses on data from the Swedish market for 1995-98. Before 1995, Sweden prohibited parallel imports of pharmaceutical products, but entry into the EU, on January 1, 1995, required Sweden to allow them. Simple empirical tests favor the accommodation hypothesis with a time lag. Using data from Sweden, the authors find that the prices of drugs, subject to competition from parallel imports increased less than those for other drugs between 1995 and 1998. Roughly, three-fourths of this effect can be attributed to the lower prices of parallel imports, and one-fourth to lower prices charged by the manufacturing firm. Econometric analysis finds that rents to parallel importers (or resource costs in parallel trade) could be more than the gain to consumers from lower prices.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by The World Bank in its series Policy Research Working Paper Series with number 2630.

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Date of creation: 31 Jul 2001
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Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:2630

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Keywords: Community Development and Empowerment; Montreal Protocol; General Technology; Information Technology; Public Health Promotion; Markets and Market Access; Access to Markets; Environmental Economics&Policies; Economic Theory&Research; Consumption;

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References

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  1. Ganslandt, Mattias & Maskus, Keith E., 2001. "Parallel Imports of Pharmaceutical Products in the European Union," Working Paper Series 546, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
  2. Patricia M. Danzon, 1998. "The Economics of Parallel Trade," PharmacoEconomics, Springer Healthcare | Adis, vol. 13(3), pages 293-304.
  3. Klepper, Gernot, 1992. "Pharmaceuticals - Who's Afraid of `1992'?," CEPR Discussion Papers 675, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Grossman, Gene & Lai, Edwin, 2006. "Parallel Imports and Price Controls," CEPR Discussion Papers 5779, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  2. Jelovac, Izabela & Bordoy, Catalina, 2005. "Pricing and welfare implications of parallel imports in the pharmaceutical industry," Open Access publications from Maastricht University urn:nbn:nl:ui:27-19469, Maastricht University.
  3. Ganslandt, Mattias & Maskus, Keith E., 2001. "Parallel Imports of Pharmaceutical Products in the European Union," Working Paper Series 546, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
  4. Margaret Kyle, 2011. "Strategic Responses to Parallel Trade," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(2), pages 2.
  5. Kristina M. Lybecker, 2008. "Keeping it real: anticounterfeiting strategies in the pharmaceutical industry," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(5), pages 389-405.
  6. Steve Thompson, 2009. "Grey Power: An Empirical Investigation of the Impact of Parallel Imports on Market Prices," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 219-232, September.
  7. Richard Friberg, 2003. "Common Currency, Common Market?," IEHAS Discussion Papers 0305, Institute of Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
  8. Ganslandt, Mattias & Maskus, Keith E., 2004. "Parallel Import and the Pricing of Pharmaceutical Products: Evidence from the European Union," Working Paper Series 622, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
  9. Bordoy,Catalina & Jelovac,Izabela, 2003. "Pricing and Welfare of Parallel Imports in the Pharmaceutical Industry," Research Memoranda 004, Maastricht : MERIT, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology.

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