Clinical Trials: The Effects of Registries and Results Databases
Posted: 25 Jun 2007
Date Written: June 1, 2007
Abstract
We provide a framework to analyze the incentives of pharmaceutical firms to generate scientific knowledge through clinical trials and investigate how these incentives are affected through different hotly debated regulatory environments. Our model can explain how the situations created by some of these environments triggered regulatory change and yields four key findings. First, a policy of full transparency -- which the medical literature promotes as the ideal scenario -- has a deterrence effect on the incentives to conduct clinical trials, as it reduces the firms' gains from trials. Second, a compulsory clinical trial registry complemented through a clinical trial results database can implement full transparency, provided the database is sufficiently comprehensive. Third, a clinical trial results database without a compulsory registry can, in principle, achieve full transparency without deterring trials and is, thus, a superior regulatory tool. Fourth, the effects of the regulations are to a large extent determined by the conditions under which product market competition takes place.
Keywords: interest groups, pharmaceutical firms, strategic information transmission, clinical trials, registries
JEL Classification: D72, I18, L15
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation