Intellectual property, pharmaceutical MNEs and the developing world

The paper examines the structure of pharmaceutical R&D funding, spillovers and public–private-academic research linkages in the developing countries. The paper also examines several policy options aimed at mitigating the trade off between the twin and often conflicting objectives of preserving incentives for the multinational enterprise (MNE) innovation and making patented drugs accessible to the poor countries at affordable prices. The paper argues for a vastly expanded size and scope of public-academic-nonprofit funding of R&D, whose results could become a global public good. Finally, the paper suggests that the international business scholars further explore the implications of the strong private–public-academic linkages found in the pharmaceutical research combined with the trends towards open innovation and economic development.