The pharmaceutical industry, intellectual property rights and access to medicines in Pakistan

The pharmaceutical industry in Pakistan is worth around US$ l.18 billion, with annual growth in 2010 approaching 10 per cent (Khan, 2012). There are more than 650 registered companies, including 31 multinationals, which in 2006 had a market share in value terms of 53.3 per cent, with national firms controlling the remaining 46.7 per cent (IMS Health, 2007). In 2007 medicines worth about US$100 million were exported. Medicines are a vital component of healthcare, and Pakistan spends around three-quarters of its healthcare budget on medicines (WHO, 2004). This chapter provides an overview, from a public health perspective, of the national pharmaceutical market and the development of drug policies and regulation. Pakistan adopted a Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) compliant patent regime in 2000, and the intersection between patents and public health is a central policy challenge. This chapter highlights key issues related to intellectual property, Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), and production and access to medicines.

Property rights as a public policy tool: an empirical analysis of the social and economic effects

Secure property rights are considered a key determinant of economic development. However, the evaluation of the causal effects of land titling is a difficult task. The Brazilian government through a program called "Papel Passado" has issued titles, since 2004, to over 85,000 families and has the goal to reach 750,000. Furthermore, another topic in Public Policy that is crucial to developing economies is income generation and child labor force participation. Particularly, in Brazil, about 5.4 million children and teenagers between 5 and 17 years old are still working. This thesis examines the direct impact of securing a property title on income and child labor force participation. In order to isolate the causal role of ownership security, this study uses a comparison between two close and very similar communities in the City of Osasco case (a town with 650,000 people in the São Paulo metropolitan area). One of them, Jardim Canaã, was fortunated to receive the titles in 2007, the other, Jardim DR, given fiscal constraints, only will be part of the program schedule in 2012, and for that reason became the control group. Also, this thesis also aims to test if there is any relationship between land title and happiness. The estimates suggest that titling results in a substantial decrease of child labor force participation, increase of income and happiness for the families that received the title compared to the others.

The impact of property rights and its limits

The empirical evaluation of the effect of land property rights typically suffers from selection problems. The allocation of property rights across households is usually not random but based on wealth, family characteristics, political clientelism, or other mechanisms built on differences between the groups that acquire property rights and the groups that do not. In this paper, we address this selection concern exploiting a natural experiment in the allocation of property rights. Twenty years ago, a homogenous group of squatters occupied a piece of privately owned land in a suburban area of Buenos Aires, Argentina. When the Congress passed an expropriation law transferring the land from the former owners to the squatters, some of the former owners surrendered the land (and received a compensation), while others decide to sue in the slow Argentine courts. These different decisions by the former owners generated an allocation of property rights that is exogenous to the characteristics of the squatters. We take advantage of this natural experiment to evaluate the effect of the allocation of urban land property rights. Our preliminary results show significant effects on housing investment, household size, and school attrition. Contradicting De Soto's hypotheses, we found nonsignificant effects on labor income and access to credit markets.

Intellectual property rights and sustainable development: a survey of major issues

Includes bibliography

Water property rights and the State: the United States experience

Includes bibliography

Property rights and the rural land market in Latin America

Includes bibliography

Between political control and efficiency gains: the evolution of agrarian property rights in Mexico

Includes bibliography

Progress made by Caribbean countries in the WTO built-in agenda on services and intellectual property rights

Includes bibliography

A property rights approach to strategy

This article is about how resources can be conceptualized as bundles of attributes for which one can assign economic property rights. Strategic considerations are deliberately incorporated into the analysis through the assessment of the activities of capture and protection of property rights, along with the examination of the institutional environment. These basic elements combine in order to design an approach to strategy. In developing this approach, the authors identify four key questions for structuring the strategy formulation process of the firm. The analytical framework is illustrated through a particular case: the collection of royalties on the genetically modified (GM) technology in soybean seeds.

The abuse of intellectual property rights and regulations in China: a law and economic analysis

From the institutional point of view, the legal system of IPR (intellectual property right, hereafter, IPR) is one of incentive institutions of innovation and it plays very important role in the development of economy. According to the law, the owner of the IPR enjoy a kind of exclusive right to use his IP(intellectual property, hereafter, IP), in other words, he enjoys a kind of legal monopoly position in the market. How to well protect the IPR and at the same time to regulate the abuse of IPR is very interested topic in this knowledge-orientated market and it is the basic research question in this dissertation. In this paper, by way of comparing study and by way of law and economic analyses, and based on the Austrian Economics School’s theories, the writer claims that there is no any contradiction between the IPR and competition law. However, in this new economy (high-technology industries), there is really probability of the owner of IPR to abuse his dominant position. And with the characteristics of the new economy, such as, the high rates of innovation, “instant scalability”, network externality and lock-in effects, the IPR “will vest the dominant undertakings with the power not just to monopolize the market but to shift such power from one market to another, to create strong barriers to enter and, in so doing, granting the perpetuation of such dominance for quite a long time.”1 Therefore, in order to keep the order of market, to vitalize the competition and innovation, and to benefit the customer, in EU and US, it is common ways to apply the competition law to regulate the IPR abuse. In Austrian Economic School perspective, especially the Schumpeterian theories, the innovation/competition/monopoly and entrepreneurship are inter-correlated, therefore, we should apply the dynamic antitrust model based on the AES theories to analysis the relationship between the IPR and competition law. China is still a developing country with relative not so high ability of innovation. Therefore, at present, to protect the IPR and to make good use of the incentive mechanism of IPR legal system is the first important task for Chinese government to do. However, according to the investigation reports,2 based on their IPR advantage and capital advantage, some multinational companies really obtained the dominant or monopoly market position in some aspects of some industries, and there are some IPR abuses conducted by such multinational companies. And then, the Chinese government should be paying close attention to regulate any IPR abuse. However, how to effectively regulate the IPR abuse by way of competition law in Chinese situation, from the law and economic theories’ perspective, from the legislation perspective, and from the judicial practice perspective, there is a long way for China to go!

The Redistribution of Property Rights, Corporate Governance and Company Restructuring after Privatisation"

The project covered the main issues of privatisation, corporate governance and company restructuring after privatisation in Hungary and in the Russian Republic, together with a summary of the broader picture of company-level changes in Central and Eastern Europe, discussing the issues of micro-financial restructuring in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The two countries selected as the focus of research can be regarded as the two most widely differing cases of the economic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Hungary began its transition very early in 1989, while Russia was very late in doing so. Hungary first implemented a series of institutional and systemic reforms before stabilising its public finances, while Russia has struggled with financial stabilisation for years without great success. Company restructuring and the introduction of new forms of governance only began in Russia in the mid-1990s. Hungary opted for "traditional" western methods of privatisation and invited a large amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) while in Russia the bulk of state-owned property was privatised either by free distribution or by a strange blend of ESOP-MBO schemes. FDI in Russia remained modest because of the high risk and uncertainty surrounding economic transactions there. Hungary was a forerunner in privatising public utilities, while Russia has moved cautiously in this area. The group's studies show that the Hungarian economy is now over the "transformation recession" and its economic success is largely due to its successful privatisation and to the dominant participation of foreign investors in company take-overs and in the restructuring process. The study of Russia provides a comprehensive account of the main factors in the so-far modest results in Russian privatisation and economic transformation.