Global Enterprise and Foreign Direct Investment

Pharmaceuticals in India and Pfizer: A Case Study - Report

Pharmaceuticals in India and Pfizer: A Case Study - Presentation

Abstract: This study examines the morally ambiguous history of patent protection as applied to the pharmaceuticals industry in India, from full protection to no protection and back. Moreover, the case of Pfizer Inc, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world is looked at, as well as the efforts undertaken by this corporation in India from its original acquisition of Dumex Ltd in 1958 to its sequential reacquisition of this subsidiary from 2000 onwards. Of notable interest is the trend of large multinationals towards controlling and “branding” generics, which has the potential to not only reassert a true, low market price for generics, but also propagate them further into the realm of non-luxury consumption goods. Thus, by the weight of market forces, the poorest of the world may soon be able to gain access to necessary drugs for survival. Another significant mutual benefit large multinationals and domestic Indian firms derive is the greatly cheaper cost of research and development in India, optimistically estimated as being much less than a tenth of the cost of similar research and development in the West. Given India’s recent assentation to the World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, huge swaths of foreign funds are flowing into firms, infrastructure and human capital cultivation. This study examines the advantages and disadvantages India faces and prescribes a cautious openness to foreign investment in the growing industry.

Trade, Foreign Direct Investment and International Technology Transfer: A Survey

-This presentation is a critique of Saggi (2002). 

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