Abstract:

This dissertation consists of two unrelated chapters. The first chapter asks two questions related to the availability of drugs in India. First, what are the characteristics of the firms that initially enter the market with new drugs in India, and which firms follow? Second, to what extent does the U.S. generic market impact the entry decisions of firms in the Indian pharmaceutical market? A discrete-time hazard model estimates the probability that a firm launches a new drug into the Indian market between 1991 and 2004. The results suggest that large, Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers are more likely to launch a new drug than small, domestic manufactures or foreign-based firms. In addition, large domestic manufacturers are more likely to launch a drug in India if that drug will lose patent protection in the U.S. within three years.

The second chapter uses a discrete choice model to estimate the probability that a physician prescribes a brand name or generic drug to patients with different types of insurance--private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, or no insurance. Alternative-specific fixed effects account for unobserved drug characteristics within a "market," which is the set of all drugs used to treat a particular diagnosis. Changes in a drug's brand name/generic status identify the impact that a patient's insurance type has on the prescribed medication. The data come from a nationally representative sample of patient visits to physician offices between 1993 and 2005. The results suggest that patients who are more likely to have prescription drug costs paid by their insurance (i.e. those with private insurance or Medicaid) are more likely to receive a prescription for a brand name drug than a generic.