The effect of regulation on pharmaceutical revenues: experience in nineteen countries.

We describe pharmaceutical regulations in nineteen developed countries from 1992 to 2004 and analyze how different regulations affect pharmaceutical revenues. First, there has been a trend toward increased regulation. Second, most regulations reduce pharmaceutical revenues significantly. Third, since 1994, most countries adopting new regulations already had some regulation in place. We find that incremental regulation of this kind had a smaller impact on costs. However, introducing new regulations in a largely unregulated market, such as the United States, could greatly reduce pharmaceutical revenues. Finally, we show that the cost-reducing effects of price controls increase the longer they remain in place.