Overview
Frank R. Lichtenberg is the Courtney C. Brown Professor of Business at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business and an NBER research associate. His research focuses on the economic impact of pharmaceutical innovation on health outcomes — primarily mortality reduction and, more recently, disability reduction — using cross-country and cross-condition variation in drug launches as the primary identification strategy.
Key Contributions / Features
- Prescription drugs and disability in Europe (Lichtenberg 2019): Two-way FE analysis of SHARE Wave 6 data showing drug launches 1982–2015 reduced severe limitation by 4.9 pp (22%), any limitation by 7.7 pp (13%), and ADL limitations by 29% in 11 European countries; obesity identified as likely offsetting factor.
- Drug launches and cancer mortality: Series of papers using country-disease variation in drug launches to estimate causal effects on cancer mortality across multiple countries and time periods.
- "Misery loves company": Documented that larger disease prevalence (market size) increases drug launches for that disease in a country — the fundamental market-size mechanism driving pharmaceutical innovation direction.
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