Quantifying public and private investment in European biopharmaceutical research and development

CRA’s Annabelle Fowler, Andreas Maos, and Tim Wilsdon co-authored original research that explores the roles and contributions of public and private investments in European biopharmaceutical R&D. In this paper, the authors provide new estimates of public and private sector spending on biopharmaceutical R&D in six European countries in 2019, concluding that the private sector has accounted for almost two thirds of the investment in pharmaceutical innovations for these markets. The results are contextualized by comparing these findings to those from regularly used supranational indicators. Overall, both private and public investments play complementary roles in medical R&D and are required to support strong innovative ecosystems.