Publications
Publications
- Forthcoming
- Review of Economics and Statistics
Regulatory Incentives for Innovation: The FDA's Breakthrough Therapy Designation
By: Amitabh Chandra, Jennifer Kao, Kathleen L. Miller and Ariel Dora Stern
Abstract
Regulators of new products confront a tradeoff between speeding a product to market and collecting additional product quality information. The FDA's Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD) provides an opportunity to understand if regulators can use new policy to innovate around this tradeoff. We find that the BTD program shortened clinical development times by 23 percent and did not impact the ex post safety profile of drugs with the designation. The BTD program had the greatest impact on less experienced firms and reduced clinical trial design complexity. The results suggest that targeted regulatory innovation can shorten R&D periods without compromising product quality.
Keywords
Innovation and Invention; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Government Administration; Research and Development; Pharmaceutical Industry
Citation
Chandra, Amitabh, Jennifer Kao, Kathleen L. Miller, and Ariel Dora Stern. "Regulatory Incentives for Innovation: The FDA's Breakthrough Therapy Designation." Review of Economics and Statistics (forthcoming). (Pre-published online March 18, 2024.)