ArticleThe American economic review2015
Do firms underinvest in long-term research? Evidence from cancer clinical trials.
Article in The American economic review, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Drug Costs in Federally Sponsored Cancer Clinical Trials: A Systematic Review.JAMA network open · 2026Pooled it
- Association of Hospital Adoption of Probiotics With Outcomes Among Neonates With Very Low Birth Weight.JAMA health forum · 2023Pooled it
- Modeling the impacts of budget reductions at the U.S. NIH on research and innovation.npj health systems · 2026Article
- An evaluation of the US public-private Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Accelerator (CARB-X) initiative.Health affairs scholar · 2026Article
- Surrogate end points in oncology: aligning drug development incentives and patient needs.Nature reviews. Clinical oncology · 2025Article
- An analysis of US net cancer drug launch prices and clinical efficacy and certainty of evidence from 2008 to 2022.Health affairs scholar · 2025Article
- Lifestyle choices among women with breast cancer in the United States.Public health challenges · 2024Article
- Pull me - push you? The disparate financing mechanisms of drug research in global health.Globalization and health · 2024Article
- REPRESENTATION AND EXTRAPOLATION: EVIDENCE FROM CLINICAL TRIALSThe quarterly journal of economics · 2024Article
- Investing in Ex Ante Regulation: Evidence from Pharmaceutical Patent Examination.American economic journal. Economic policy · 2023Article
- What Can Economics Say about Alzheimer's Disease?Journal of economic literature · 2023Article
- Is novel research worth doing? Evidence from peer review at 49 journals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Towards Better Pharmaceutical Provision in Europe-Who Decides the Future?Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- What drives innovation? Lessons from COVID-19 R&D.Journal of health economics · 2022Article
- [Pharmaceutical Innovations: Superior Position of the USA and Weaknesses of German Research].Wirtschaftsdienst (Hamburg, Germany : 1949) · 2021Article
- P-hacking in clinical trials and how incentives shape the distribution of results across phases.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Drug discovery in neuro-oncology: challenges in the path forward.Neuro-oncology · 2018Article
- Research Priorities and Resource Allocation in the Investigation of New Drugs for Cancer in Least Developed Countries.Journal of oncology · 2018Review
- How do patents affect research investments?Annual review of economics · 2017Article
- CNS Anticancer Drug Discovery and Development: 2016 conference insights.CNS oncology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
We investigate whether private research investments are distorted away from long-term projects. Our theoretical model highlights two potential sources of this distortion: short-termism and the fixed patent term. Our empirical context is cancer research, where clinical trials - and hence, project durations - are shorter for late-stage cancer treatments relative to early-stage treatments or cancer prevention. Using newly constructed data, we document several sources of evidence that together show private research investments are distorted away from long-term projects. The value of life-years at stake appears large. We analyze three potential policy responses: surrogate (non-mortality) clinicaltrial endpoints, targeted R&D subsidies, and patent design.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.