Author: Lucy Xiaolu Wang, Assistant Professor, Department of Resource Economics, UMass Amherst

Pharmaceutical innovation saves lives. But not every “new” drug is truly new. Patents are designed to reward breakthrough inventions by granting the inventors temporary monopoly rights to recoup the costs of research and development and to encourage future innovation. But firms may also exploit the system in ways that make drugs more expensive and less […]

Procuring lifesaving drugs is a daunting challenge in many low- and middle-income countries. Essential treatments are often neither available nor affordable in these nations, even decades after the drugs entered the market. Prospective buyers from these countries face a patent thicket, where a single drug may be covered by hundreds of patents. This makes it […]