Stochastic Frontier Analysis를 이용한 제약회사의 효율성과 그 결정요인분석

Abstract

Background: In 2012, Ministry of Health and Welfare announced 5-year plan of the development of the pharmaceutical industry, which pointed out the problems of the pharmaceutical industry as the insufficient investment in research and development (R&D) and the unfair business practice, and suggested the technological innovation, market transparency and nurturing global enterprises as solutions. It is quite interesting to study which factors determine the efficiency of the pharmaceutical firms. Methods: To estimate the efficiency of the pharmaceutical firms and the determinants of their efficiency, methods of the stochastic frontier analysis and the panel study are applied to the data of 60 domestic pharmaceutical firms from 2006 to 2012. The efficiency is derived by the distance between the decision making units and the most efficient frontier curve. Results: First, the result of the stochastic frontier analysis shows that overall efficiency of the pharmaceutical firms is increasing as time goes by. If classified by the scale, the larger firms show higher efficiency and if classified by the degree of innovation, the innovative firms show higher efficiency compared to the less-innovative ones. Second, the result of estimation of the determinants of efficiency shows that the firms with larger expenses of the sales promotion and the entertainment, show lower efficiency. Conclusion: The first result implies that the scale of the firm and the investment in R&D explain the efficiency of the pharmaceutical firms. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the investment on the fundamental researches to vitalize R&D of the new drugs. The second result can be explained by the structural characteristics of the small pharmaceutical firms which produce generic drugs. Therefore, the government tries to make the pharmaceutical firms to optimize of the expenses of the sales promotion and the entertainment, and to increase R&D with the policies such as to boost up the R&D investment and to prohibit rebates, etc.