Focusing on 8 drug types on the WHO-approved medicine list, we constructed an original dataset of 899 drug samples from 17 low- and median-income countries and tested them for visual appearance, disintegration, and analyzed their ingredients by chromatography and spectrometry. Fifteen percent of...

This paper uses an audit sample and a consumer survey to study the intriguing market of online prescription drugs facing US customers, and assesses the role that certification agencies play in online drug markets. On the supply side, we acquire samples of five popular brand-name prescription...

Focusing on 8 drug types on the WHO-approved medicine list, we constructed an original dataset of 899 drug samples from 17 low- and median-income countries and tested them for visual appearance, disintegration, and analyzed their ingredients by chromatography and spectrometry. Fifteen percent of...

Experts claim that some Indian drug manufacturers cut corners and make substandard drugs for markets with non-existent, under-developed or emerging regulatory oversight, notably Africa. This paper assesses the quality of 1470 antibiotic and tuberculosis drug samples that claim to be made in...

Pharmaceutical products can be of poor quality either because they contain zero correct active ingredient (referred to as "counterfeit") or because they contain a non-zero but incorrect amount of the right active ingredient (referred to as "substandard"). While both types of poor-quality drugs...

In this paper, the authors document the complex issues facing the FDA in assessing the quality of generic drugs. They conclude that increased transparency as well as the updating of FDA bioequivalence standards may be important to overcome some of these challenges.

Fake and substandard medicines are a significant problem in developing nations and a growing problem in developed ones, too. This study finds that corruption is strongly correlated with poor-quality drugs.

A recent survey found that a higher percentage of sampled smokers had tried vaping in the UK, relative to the US, especially among those who claimed they had tried to quit smoking previously.

This paper analyzes whether taxes create a price wedge between legal and illicit cigarettes and thereby affect the availability and trade of illicit whites across markets.