From Free Entry to Patent Protection: Welfare Implications for the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry

There has been fierce debate over the imposition of stronger intellectual property rights laws for pharmaceutical products in developing countries. This paper uses data from the Indian pharmaceutical industry to develop a structural model of demand, supply and entry. The estimation yields demand and supply parameters that indicate significant heterogeneity among firms both within and across different therapeutic segments. The estimated parameters are used to simulate patent enforcement and price deregulation for 43 drugs, which predicts large losses for consumers and relatively small gains in profits for the global patent holders.