Price Subsidies, Diagnostic Tests, and Targeting of Malaria Treatment: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

Jessica Cohen, Pascaline Dupas and Simone Schaner

No 17943, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Both under- and over-treatment of communicable diseases are public bads. But efforts to decrease one run the risk of increasing the other. Using rich experimental data on household treatment-seeking behavior in Kenya, we study the implications of this tradeoff for subsidizing life-saving antimalarials sold over-the-counter at retail drug outlets. We show that a very high subsidy (such as the one under consideration by the international community) dramatically increases access, but nearly half of subsidized pills go to patients without malaria. We study two ways to better target subsidized drugs: reducing the subsidy level and introducing rapid malaria tests over-the-counter.

JEL-codes: D61 H23 I18 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Published as Jessica Cohen & Pascaline Dupas & Simone Schaner, 2015. "Price Subsidies, Diagnostic Tests, and Targeting of Malaria Treatment: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(2), pages 609-45, February.

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Journal Article: Price Subsidies, Diagnostic Tests, and Targeting of Malaria Treatment: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial (2015)
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