盈利能力與醫(yī)藥研發(fā)的能力

1、 new products.Although the argument isplausible on its face,quantitative evidence onthe robustness of the linkage has been scarce.This paper reports the results of a simple dataanalysis yielding surprising new insights.Profitability and investments in R&D can,in principle,be linked in three rath

2、er differentways.First,successful R&D leads,with longand variable lags,to new products,which,de-pending upon their reception in the market,can add greatly to company profits.The dis-tribution of profit outcomes,as research byHenry Grabowski and John Vernon hasshown,is highly skewed.1A minority o

3、f newproducts confer blockbuster profits,while themajority return less than the capitalized costof R&D,including the cost of failed projects.Second,the profits earned by a companyserve as a source of funds to support R&Dinvestments,and some managers are knownto set R&D budgets using rule

4、s of thumb em-phasizing an indicator of current cash flow orsales.To be sure, as recent experience inbiotechnology shows,funds for R&D can also try were probable exceptions.2Third,manag-ersexpectations of future profit opportuni-ties,which are tempered,inter alia,by contemporary market condition

5、s,can exert a demand-pull influence on R&D investments.3Testing how well these relationships hold for investments in pharmaceutical R&D is rendered difficult by the complex structure of the leading pharmaceutical companies.They operate within a wide variety of fields in addi-tion to ethical

6、drugsfor example,pharmacy benefit management,herbicides and pesti-cides,medical instruments and supplies,prosthetics,hair care products,dental prod-ucts,and nutritional products.The more di-versified companies almost never publish R&D outlay breakdowns subdivided among these fields,and they seld

7、om report their op-erating margin results in enough detail to re-late R&D indices with any precision to meas-ures of profitability.An alternative approach,and the one used here,is to analyze data on R&D investment and profits at the aggregated industry level.©2001 Project HOPEThe People

8、-to-PeopleHealth Foundation,Inc.F.M.Scherer is Aetna Professor of Public Policy Emeritus at Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government and a lecturer in public affairs at Princeton University.216H E A L T H A F F A I R S V o l u m e 20,N u m b e r 5 The most closely comparable aggregate time-s

9、eries measure of industry profitability is derived from Census of Manufactures and An-nual Survey of Manufactures data from the U.S.Census Bureau.It is computed as sales less outside materials purchases,payroll outlays,and employee fringe benefitsincluding 4.23percent per yearmuch lower than the 7.5

10、1percent growth rate found for R&D out-lays (Exhibit 2.The disparity of growth rates implies a likely slackening of R&D growth rates in the future. If R&D were covered solely by domestic gross margins,continu-ation of growth trends experienced since 1962SOURCES: Pharmaceutical Research a

11、nd Manufacturers of America, Industry Profile: 1998 (Washington: PhRMA, July 1998; and PhRMA, Annual Survey Report: 198385 (Washington: PhRMA, 1986.NOTE: Outlays have been adjusted for inflation, using the deflator for U.S. gross domestic product, with 1992 as the base year.19621970198019901996217H

12、E A L T H A F F A I R S S e p t e m b e r /O c t o b e r 2001 As in the R&D time series,pharmaceutical industry gross margins exhibit long swings around their exponential time trend. To some extent,coincidence in the timing of the swings can be seen by comparing Exhibits1 and2.However,the relati

13、onships are brought into sharper focus by computing the percent-age deviations of actual R&D outlays and gross margins from their exponential time trend values.6The resulting trend deviation series are juxtaposed in Exhibit3.The degree of coincidence was,at least to this investigator,surprisingl

14、y close.The sim-ple Pearsonian correlation between the two time series is+0.92.Deviations from trend values rise and fall in tandem.The swings are so closely correlated that it would be implau-sible to infer a chain of causation running from R&D to profits,since lags of ten to fif-teen years fro

15、m peak R&D spending to peak profitability for new products are typical.7At two of the three clear turning points,reversals in the R&D spending series precede reversals in the gross margin series by a year or two. This is superficially inconsistent with a hy-pothesis that changes in gross mar

16、gins drive creasingly rich opportunities for profitable new product development.Sensitivity tests revealed that the patterns observed in Exhibit3persist when domestic R&D outlays,a time series available only be-ginning in1970,are substituted for worldwide R&D outlays,and when fringe benefit

17、out-lays,reported by the Census Bureau only be-ginning in1967,are not deducted in calculat-ing gross margins.It is conceivable,as one referee suggested, that the cycles observed here reflect spuri-ously correlated changes in industry aggre-gates,for example, as a result of differences in sample cove

18、rage between the trade associa-tion and Census Bureau universes.To test this possibility, a further analysis correlated trend deviations in variables defined as ratios,with no intermingling of trade association and cen-sus universe data for a given ratio.For R&D, the relevant ratio was worldwide

19、 R&D out-lays,divided by worldwide sales of trade asso-ciation members in any given year.The PhRMA sales variable was not used in the previous analysis.For gross margins, the rele-vant ratio was the gross margin,as defined for218H E A L T H A F F A I R SV o l u m e20,N u m b e r5 SOURCES: Pharma

20、ceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Industry Profile: 1998 (Washington: PhRMA, July 1998, and Annual Survey Report: 198385 (Washington: PhRMA, 1986; and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufactures: 1992, and Annual Surveys of Manufactures, various years.NOTE: Percentages were figur

21、ed using constant 1992 dollars.H E A L T H A F F A I R SS e p t e m b e r/O c t o b e r2001 220trys behavior,it has self-evident implicationsfor policy interventions aimed at reducing in-dustry prices and profits.NOTES1.H.G.Grabowski and J.M.Vernon,“A New Lookat the Returns and Risks to Pharmaceutic

22、alR&D,”Management Science(July 1990: 804821.2.See C.P.Himmelberg and B.C.Petersen,“R&Dand Internal Finance: A Panel Study of SmallFirms in High-Tech Industries,”Review of Econom-ics and Statistics(February 1994:3851;W.W.McCutchen Jr.,“Estimating the Impact of theR&D Tax Credit on Strategic Groups in thePharmaceutical Industry,”Research Poli