American Economic Review: Insights
ISSN 2640-205X (Print) | ISSN 2640-2068 (Online)
Internal Deadlines, Drug Approvals, and Safety Problems
American Economic Review: Insights
vol. 3,
no. 1, March 2021
(pp. 67–82)
Abstract
Absent explicit quotas, incentives, reporting, or fiscal year-end motives, drug approvals around the world surge in December, at month-ends, and before respective major national holidays. Drugs approved before these informal deadlines are associated with significantly more adverse effects, including more hospitalizations, life-threatening incidents, and deaths—particularly, drugs most rushed through the approval process. These patterns are consistent with a model in which regulators rush to meet internal production benchmarks associated with salient calendar periods: this "desk-clearing" behavior results in more lax review, leading both to increased output and increased safety issues at particular—and predictable—periodicities over the year.Citation
Cohen, Lauren, Umit G. Gurun, and Danielle Li. 2021. "Internal Deadlines, Drug Approvals, and Safety Problems." American Economic Review: Insights, 3 (1): 67–82. DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20200086Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
- I11 Analysis of Health Care Markets
- L51 Economics of Regulation
- L65 Chemicals; Plastics; Rubber; Drugs; Biotechnology