Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-2015
Publication Title
American Economic Review
Department
Department of Economics
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 trade-off 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 one-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 D12, D82, I12, O12, O15)
DOI
10.1257/aer.20130267
Dartmouth Digital Commons Citation
Cohen, Jessica; Dupas, Pascaline; and Schaner, Simone, "Price Subsidies, Diagnostic Tests, and Targeting of Malaria Treatment: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial" (2015). Dartmouth Scholarship. 2385.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa/2385