Pleased to announce publication of A Non-Coercive Economic Approach to Product Hopping (with Steve D. Shadowen) in Antitrust magazine. Drug companies sometimes make trivial changes to products just to stifle generics. Some say very little role for antitrust. Shadowen and I respond.

In particular, in Doryx, Namenda, and Coercion, Jack E. Pace III and Kevin C. Adam applaud courts’ finding liability only when there’s coercion. Shadowen & I show how unique characteristics of pharma markets render this approach misguided. We also explain that deferential analyses give brand firms free rein to evade regulatory regimes. And we offer conservative framework for analyzing product hopping rooted in economics and realities of pharma industry.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3310834