Governance and the effectiveness of public health subsidies: Evidence from Ghana, Kenya and Uganda

Rebecca Dizon-Ross, Pascaline Dupas and Jonathan Robinson

Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz

Abstract: Distributing subsidized health products through existing health infrastructure could substantially and cost-effectively improve health in sub-Saharan Africa. There is, however, widespread concern that poor governance - in particular, limited health worker accountability - seriously undermines the effectiveness of subsidy programs. We audit targeted bednet distribution programs to quantify the extent of agency problems. We find that around 80% of the eligible receive the subsidy as intended, and up to 15% of subsidies are leaked to ineligible people. Supplementing the program with simple financial or monitoring incentives for health workers does not improve performance further and is thus not cost-effective in this context.

Keywords: Economics; Applied Economics; Economic Theory; Cost Effectiveness Research; Health Services; Comparative Effectiveness Research; Clinical Research; Good Health and Well Being; Leakage; Extortion; Shirking; Motivation; extortion; leakage; motivation; shirking; Econometrics; Applied economics; Economic theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-12-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Journal Article: Governance and the effectiveness of public health subsidies: Evidence from Ghana, Kenya and Uganda (2017)
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