Merck, a pharmaceutical company, has taken thousands of drugs through the federal approval process and so can do it more cost efficiently than many competitors who are new to the industry. These cost savings that come to Merck in the drug approval process are an example of:

learning effects

Explanation:

Learning effects: In economics, the term "learning effects" is described as the process through which specific education is considered as increasing productivity and therefore results in producing higher wages. It gives an insight to the company to develop some competitive advantage by decreasing some of the production costs. However, the employees are focused on working more efficiently, decrease in the number of wastes and defects on several products.

In the question above, the given statement signifies the leaning effects.