The Impact of the Consistency Evaluation Policy of Generic Drugs on R&D Investment Intensity of Pharmaceutical Companies—An Empirical Study Based on the Difference-in-Differences Model

In 2016, China began to execute the consistency evaluation policy of generic drugs. Many scholars believed that the policy would stimulate pharmaceutical firms to increase R&D investment with a theoretical perspective, but few have conducted empirical studies. Therefore, we conduct a difference-in-differences (DID) model and use panel data of 111 A-share listed pharmaceutical firms from 2012 to 2020 to empirically study the impact of the consistency evaluation policy of generic drugs on pharmaceutical firms' R&D investment intensity. The result shows that the policy has a significant positive impact on the R&D investment intensity of firms with chemical generics, robust under the test for parallel trend test, placebo test, and the propensity score matching and difference-in-differences (PSM-DID) test. In addition, we further analyzed the impact of this policy on the R&D intensity of pharmaceutical firms according to the heterogeneity of enterprise's operational nature, regional distribution and profitability. From the perspective of time changes and the average effect, the R&D investment intensity of private pharmaceutical firms is more affected by the policy than state-owned enterprises; the R&D investment intensity of pharmaceutical firms in the eastern region is more affected by this policy than those in the central and the western; the R&D investment intensity of high-profitability pharmaceutical firms is more affected by the policy than those with low-profitability. The consistency evaluation policy is still being implemented, and its impact on pharmaceutical firms needs to be studied from different empirical research perspectives in the future.