Internal Deadlines, Drug Approvals, and Safety Problems / Lauren Cohen, Umit Gurun, Danielle Li.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cohen, Lauren.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Gurun, Umit.

Li, Danielle.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w28071.

NBER working paper series no. w28071

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2020.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Print version record

November 2020.