A note on disease burden and pharmaceutical R&D

We examine the relationship between research and development (R&D) expenditures expected impact of diseases in a simple theoretical framework that allows for intellectual property rights (IPR) protection to be strong or weak. In our model, an agent forms expectation disease using publicly available statistic on (population level) burden, such as disability-adjusted life year. show profit-maximising firm will exert relatively more R&D effort with intermediate impacts. also discuss how weak IPR regime alters pattern investment.