When the Pill Peddlers Met the Scientists: The Antecedents and Implications of Early Collaborations between US Pharmaceutical Firms and Universities

Abstract

This paper examines rise of collaborations between for-profit pharmaceutical firms and academic scientists between 1927 and 1946, investigating (a) the historical and economic factors that led to such collaborations and (b) the implications of these early collaborations for the firms involved. The paper builds on a tradition ofprior research in this area, which reviews case evidence in a detailed way. The paper supplements this evidence with additional historical analysis and by drawing on survey data on a population of research-active firms. The paper’s analyses highlight the importance of geography in the collaborative efforts of the period and provide evidence that those firms that did collaborate with universities produced greater number ofpatented outputs and grew more quickly than those that did not. Overall, the findings provide useful evidence about the qualities that helped set the stage for the hand-in-glove relationships that characterize the interactions between modern universities and pharmaceutical firms in the United States.