An Analysis of Price Discrimination in Brand Name Drug Wholesaling

Accounting measures of profitability are viewed by the academic literature with skepticism, perhaps even disdain. Accounting information and accounting rates of return are, however, relied upon extensively by market participants to compare and contrast the economic performance of alternative investments, alternative companies and alternative industries, at a single point in time and over time. We believe that accounting information and accounting measures of profitability can be useful under specific conditions. We agree that important concerns do arise about the appropriateness of accounting measures for certain analyses. However, one can take these concerns too far. We describe one such situation - one involving an antitrust complaint of price discrimination in a particular network industry - wholesaling in pharmaceutical product markets. (January 2007)