Tort Reform and Innovation / Alberto Galasso, Hong Luo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Galasso, Alberto.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Luo, Hong.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w22712.

NBER working paper series no. w22712

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2016.

Summary:

Current academic and policy debates focus on the impact of tort reforms on physicians' behavior and medical costs. This paper examines whether these reforms also affect incentives to develop new technologies. We find that, on average, laws that limit the liability exposure of healthcare providers are associated with a significant reduction in medical device patenting and that the effect is predominantly driven by innovators located in the states passing the reforms. Tort laws have the strongest impact in medical fields in which the probability of facing a malpractice claim is the largest, and they do not seem to affect the amount of new technologies of the highest and lowest quality. Our results underscore the importance of considering dynamic effects in the economic analysis of tort laws.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2016.