Financing Biomedical Innovation
综述了药物研发过程的结构特征及其融资困境，指出研发成本上升而发现率下降，导致社会价值高的治疗项目投资不足，并探讨了金融创新等解决方案。
We review the recent literature on financing biomedical innovation, with a specific focus on the drug development process and how it may be enhanced to improve outcomes. We begin by laying out stylized facts about the structure of the drug development process and its associated costs and risks, and we present evidence that the rate of discovery for life-saving treatments has declined over time while costs have increased. We make the argument that these structural features require drug development (i.e., biopharmaceutical) firms to rely on external financing and at the same time amplify market frictions that may hinder the ability of these firms to obtain financing, especially for treatments that may have large societal value relative to the benefits going to the firms and their investors. We then provide an overview of the evidence for various types of market frictions to which these drug development firms are exposed and discuss how these frictions affect their incentive to invest in the development of new drugs, leading to underinvestment in valuable treatments. In light of this evidence, numerous studies have proposed ways to overcome this funding gap, including the use of financial innovation. We discuss the potential of these approaches to improve outcomes.