The cost of influence: How gifts to physicians shape prescriptions and drug costs
研究美国制药企业向医生赠送礼品对处方行为和药品成本的影响，发现每1美元礼品导致品牌药处方增加和23美元成本上升，全国性礼品禁令可降低2%的糖尿病药品成本。
This paper investigates the influence of gifts - monetary and in-kind payments - from drug firms to US physicians on prescription behavior and drug costs. Using causal models and machine learning, we estimate physicians' heterogeneous responses to payments on antidiabetic prescriptions. We find that payments lead to increased prescription of brand drugs, resulting in a cost rise of $23 per dollar value of transfer received. Paid physicians show higher responses when they treat higher proportions of patients receiving a government-funded low-income subsidy that lowers out-of-pocket drug costs. We estimate that introducing a national gift ban would reduce diabetes drug costs by 2%.