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Start Pharmaceutical Development Company

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Start Pharmaceutical development companies are an example of a service characterized by high fixed costs and low marginalized costs. The fixed costs are very high because of the extremely high costs of developing a new drug. To bring a new drug to market costs hundreds of millions of dollars and is very risky. For a drug to be brought to market the Food and Drug Administration must approve of the drug. Then after the drug is approved it can be sold. The research and development costs are spent before any units of the drug are produced, so the companies are left with very high fixed costs. The highly automated drug production facilities also contribute to the high fixed costs because building the high-tech factories is very expensive. However, after the factory is built the marginal costs are very low in this industry because producing 1 more tablet or dose of the drug is very cheap because of the small amount of materials cost. …show more content…

When the company has patent protection or a government market restriction such as orphan drug status, the company functions like a monopoly. Because no other company can manufacture the drug while these barriers are in place, they are the only supplier. They face a rather inelastic demand curve because sick people are likely to purchase the drug no matter the price. In the long run, after the patents and barriers to entry have expired, drug companies function like monopolistic competitors. Because the formula to manufacture the drug is no longer secret, other companies will produce generic versions of the drug. This means the supply will increase and the market will reach a more efficient, lower price of equilibrium. However, because the drug company will spend money on advertising to differentiate the drug from generic brands the company will act like monopolistic competitors not pure

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