| This paper investigates the access effects of new drugs. In particular, we estimate the increase in the number of prescriptions and the number of people taking medications at various drug class levels due to a single new drug approval, by merging various prescription drug related datasets. After employing a Difference-in-Difference model to adjust for general time trend and drug class-specific characteristics, we find the existence of access effects of new drugs both in an increase in the number of prescriptions and the number of people taking medications in existing drug classes, and in the creation of new drug classes so as to increase the number of prescriptions and the number of people taking medications in more aggregated drug class levels. We also find that more creative drugs (e.g., new chemical entities (NCEs)) have larger and more significant access effects, whereas less creative drugs (e.g., generic drugs, non-NCEs) have no significant effects. |
