Determinants of innovation activity of Russian pharmaceutical manufacturers

The article presents the findings of an empirical study on the main determinants of innovation activity of Russian pharmaceutical manufacturers. We substantiate the application of two indicators that characterize innovation activity of pharmaceutical manufacturers: the first is the ratio of the number of the organization’s proprietary intellectual property objects to those used under license; the second is the number of studies conducted by pharmaceutical manufacturers for original and reproduced medicines. Two-dimensional cluster analysis (the k-means clustering, excluding repetitions, using Euclidean distances) is used to classify enterprises as innovation-active. We highlight major factors influencing innovation activity of pharmaceutical manufacturers directly on the basis of the content analysis of Russian and foreign scientific works published on this topic. We analyze the selected determinants using statistical and econometric tools. The following statistical criteria are applied: Pearson’s chi-squared test and Fisher’s exact test for qualitative (dichotomous) indicators, as well as Student’s t-test and the Mann - Whitney test to analyze quantitative indicators. Using discriminant analysis of the main determinants of innovation activity of Russian pharmaceutical enterprises we reveal the most significant determinants, primarily those that directly characterize the size of industrial enterprises. Additionally, we prove that widespread processes such as mergers and acquisitions of pharmaceutical manufacturers contribute to the possibility of accumulating resources necessary for innovation development of pharmaceutical manufacturers; however, these processes have certain negative effects associated with an increase in the oligopolization of pharmaceutical markets.