The Pharmaceutical Industry: A Study in Corporate Power

Abstract

Most studies of the pharmaceutical industry have focused on such issues as restrictive patent regulation, ineffective products, duplicative marketing procedures, misrepresentative advertising, and the peculiar noncompetitive structure of markets. These investigations have revealed only certain aspects of the structure of the pharmaceutical industry. Three significant trends are investigated in this paper: international expansion, diversification through mergers and acquisitions, and interlocking directorates with financial institutions. The thesis of this paper is that small-scale drug manufacturing firms have been gradually replaced by large-scale multinational conglomerates. Production and sales are no longer dependent on pharmaceutical products. In the typical case, large-scale pharmaceutical-producing firms have been increasingly linked to financial institutions through interlocking directorates.