Investigating the Relationship between Political Contributions by Pharmaceutical Companies and Speed of FDA Drug Approval [CANCELLED]

There are two primary objectives of this paper: 1) to identify the causal effects leading to political pressure by studying the relationship between political contributions by pharmaceutical companies and the time taken for... [ view full abstract ]

There are two primary objectives of this paper: 1) to identify the causal effects leading to political pressure by studying the relationship between political contributions by pharmaceutical companies and the time taken for their New Drug Application (NDA) to get approved by the FDA, and 2) to investigate the causal relationship of faster NDA approval and post-market safety events of those drugs. 

In this paper, I use drug approval and safety data from the FDA that spans 1980 – 2010 and data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics for political contributions by pharmaceutical companies during the same time period. I employ a difference in difference (DID) methodology to estimate the causal effect of political contributions by pharmaceutical companies on the speed at which their NDAs get approved from the FDA.