Innovation and Health Inequality: Evidence from Direct-Acting Antivirals

Kevin Callison, Michael Darden and Keith Teltser

No 33735, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study disparities in liver transplant allocation when innovation alleviates the scarcity of organs. When direct-acting antivirals for Hepatitis C (HCV) reduced HCV+ liver demand, we show a disproportionate increase in White HCV- liver transplants (56.6%) relative to Black HCV- transplants (11.9%). The time to transplant decreased (31.1%), and the transplant rate increased (19.5pp), only for White HCV- patients. Our results are surprising because liver health is the primary determinant of transplant priority and marginal White patients were of better liver health. We show more similar gains when we focus on privately insured patients and/or areas with more Black patients.

JEL-codes: I10 I11 I14 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: EH
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33735.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33735

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33735

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().