Interdependence in price variations within the Argentine pharmaceutical market: COPD and asthma

Abstract

Chronic respiratory diseases (CRD) are becoming a growing problem for all regions, withCOPD and asthma being the ones with the highest mortality. The commercialization ofthe medicines needed to treat these diseases takes place in markets whose characteristicsare far from perfect competition. The aim of this article is to evaluate the interdependenceassociated with the decision of price variations of medicines sold in Argentina for thesetwo specific diseases. Using a web scraping algorithm, 148 weekly price variationscorresponding to 184 drugs used to combat asthma and COPD were analysed. Throughthe construction of Granger causality networks, the existence of interdependence of theprice variation decisions of all drugs in the sector was detected. However, the resultswould show a null tendency of the price variations of medicines to be associated by drugsor laboratories.