Bribery in Health Care in Peru and Uganda

Jennifer Hunt

No 2757, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper, I examine the role of household income in determining who bribes and how much they bribe in health care in Peru and Uganda. I find that rich patients are more likely than other patients to bribe in public health care: doubling household consumption increases the bribery probability by 0.2-0.4 percentage points in Peru, compared to a bribery rate of 0.8%; doubling household expenditure in Uganda increases the bribery probability by 1.2 percentage points compared to a bribery rate of 17%. The income elasticity of the bribe amount cannot be precisely estimated in Peru, but is about 0.37 in Uganda. Bribes in the Ugandan public sector appear to be fees-for-service extorted from the richer patients amongst those exempted by government policy from paying the official fees. Bribes in the private sector appear to be flat-rate fees paid by patients who do not pay official fees. I do not find evidence that the public health care sector in either Peru or Uganda is able to price-discriminate less effectively than public institutions with less competition from the private sector.

Keywords: health care; governance; bribery; corruption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H4 K4 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2007-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-law and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published - published as "Bribery in Health Care in Uganda" in: Journal of Health Economics, 2010, 29 (5), 699-707

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https://docs.iza.org/dp2757.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Bribery in Health Care in Peru and Uganda (2007)
Working Paper: BRIBERY IN HEALTH CARE IN PERU AND UGANDA (2007)
Working Paper: Bribery in Health Care in Peru and Uganda (2007)
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