Abstract

There is a wide consensus among scholars of the pharmaceutical sector that the American pharmaceutical sector has been much more dynamic and successful than the European one from the mid-1990s onward. The aim of this paper is to reconsider the statistical limelights commonly adopted to justify the present "competitive superiority" of the American pharmaceutical sector, in the light of the policy address of the European pharmaceutical sector. An additional aim is to evaluate what could be the future development of the US and the EU markets using an integrated vision (taking industrial policies, the welfare systems and regulatory policies into account). A particular attention is put on the analysis of the different trends within the European pharmaceutical sector, in order to verify if important signals in terms of new conditions for the European market itself do exist. Some mid-term scenarios are then outlined, evaluating both their consequences and their feasibility.