Introduction

Abstract

This book deals with incentives to innovation, with a special focus on the pharmaceutical sector. A relevant issue in most industries, as innovation has been regarded as an engine for economic growth that most governments want to promote, it is particularly relevant in the pharmaceutical industry, where not all social needs provide equally profitable opportunities and where most OECD countries strive to implement different measures to promote research in these less profitable areas. This issue becomes particularly dramatic when we take into account diseases mostly affecting low income countries and diseases affecting small groups of patients, where research into vaccines and new drugs is limited or non existent.