California Management Review

Abstract

The Japanese pharmaceutical market is the second largest in the world, worth about $26 billion in 1985. The industry is one of the few high-technology areas in which the United States still maintains a favorable balance of trade with Japan. Today, the Japanese pharmaceutical market is experiencing a major structural reorganization as a result of both scientific breakthroughs in the development of biotechnology and government measures to liberalize trade under pressure from abroad. This reorganization process will provide many new opportunities for American and other foreign firms, but it will also bring them new challenges from increasingly competitive and internationally oriented Japanese drug companies.

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