Virtual OHE Annual Lecture 2021: Do Patents Work? Evidence from Pharmaceutical Innovation

The exceptional circumstances of COVID-19 revived the controversy around patents of pharmaceutical products. A group of specialists suggested that the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement should be waived to provide quick access to COVID-19 to low- and middle-income countries. Those opposing the waiver argued that there was no guarantee that this approach would solve the manufacturing shortage and distribution bottlenecks while jeopardising future innovation.

For OHE’s Annual Lecture 2021, Professor Kyle will deliver a talk entitled Do patents work? Evidence from pharmaceutical innovation. She will describe the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of patents in the pharmaceutical sector. Specifically, she will present evidence on the rate and direction of innovation linked to patents in pharma. Because they remain a contentious tool in innovation policy, as seen in the current debate over the proposed patent waiver for COVID vaccines, she will also discuss the empirical evidence concerning alternatives to patents, such as prizes and government grants.  

Margaret Kyle is a recognised expert on competition and intellectual property in the pharmaceutical industry. She has researched the role of geographic and academic spillovers in R&D productivity, firm-specific and policy determinants of the distribution of new products, and competition from generic drugs. Professor Kyle has examined the impact of trade and intellectual property policies on R&D investment and competition. In the context of COVID-19, she has analysed how incentives can promote the development of new medical technologies and advance the rapid manufacture of tests and treatments.

Professor Kyle is Professor of Economics at the Center for Industrial Economics (CERNA), MINES ParisTech (Ecole des Mines). She is also a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and has published in prestigious journals such as the RAND Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Strategic Management Journal, Health Services Research, and Health Affairs.

She has been a visiting professor of strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management; professor at the University of Toulouse and the Toulouse School of Economics; assistant professor at the London Business School; visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong; and visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Income and Productivity at the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.