EU Enlargement, Parallel Trade and Price Competition in Pharmaceuticals. What’s to Blame? Derogation or Perception?
This study analysed data from Sweden to check if parallel trade increased the competition in the pharmaceutical market, and whether the process of EU enlargement increased pushed the prices even further down. On the one hand, the researchers found out that, indeed, the prices of the drugs facing competition from parallel imports was on average 17% to 21% lower than those that did not. On the other hand, EU enlargement process has not increased this effect.