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Special Interest Politics and Intellectual Property Rights: An Economic Analysis of Strengthening Patent Protection in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Chu, Angus C. (2007): Special Interest Politics and Intellectual Property Rights: An Economic Analysis of Strengthening Patent Protection in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

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Abstract

Since the 80’s, the pharmaceutical industry has benefited substantially from a series of policy changes that have strengthened the patent protection for brand-name drugs as a result of the industry’s political influence. This paper incorporates special interest politics into a quality-ladder model to analyze the policymakers’ tradeoff between the socially optimal patent length and campaign contributions. The welfare analysis suggests that the presence of a pharmaceutical lobby distorting patent protection is socially undesirable in a closed-economy setting but may improve social welfare in a multi-country setting, which features an additional efficiency tradeoff between monopolistic distortion and international free-riding on innovations.

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