Prof. Małgorzata Majewska (ESSEC Business School) to Present a Lecture on Subsidies in Pharmaceutical Markets

Prof. Małgorzata Majewska is a researcher at the Department of Economics at ESSEC Business School, a member of the THEMA research lab in Cergy and an associate member of the Toulouse School of Economics. Her research focuses on health economics and empirical industrial organization, with a particular interest in the pharmaceutical industry.

Prof. Majewska will be visiting the Faculty of Economic Sciences on 3 December. The seminar will begin at 17:00 in Auditorium A. Her presentation will be devoted to the topic: „Universal Subsidies in Pharmaceutical Markets: Lessons from Poland's Drugs 75+ Policy” (the abstract is provided below).

The lecture is organized as part of the Microeconomics Seminars Series, coordinated by Prof. Łukasz Grzybowski.

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Widely used public policies fully subsidizing essential goods and services aim to improve access, but removing price signals may also produce distortions. We investigate this problem by leveraging Poland's Drugs 75+ program, which provides free prescription medications to individuals aged 75 and older, as a natural experiment. Using a difference-in-discontinuities approach, event studies, and detailed administrative and survey data, we draw three main conclusions. First, the program reduced out-of-pocket medication expenditures for seniors, substantially alleviating the risk of catastrophic health costs. Second, it improved access: medication consumption increased, particularly for higher-cost products, to some extent displacing cheaper alternatives. Third, the shift in consumption patterns increased public payer costs per dose of treatment. These findings highlight the challenges of subsidy programs that eliminate price signals, as they can alter demand in ways that improve access but undermine cost-effectiveness.