Health Economics Commons^™

Does Price Affect The Demand For Information About New Health Technologies? Evidence From A Field Experiment In Nigeria, Edward Okeke, A. V. Chari, Akinfolarin Adepiti

Edward Okeke

Does A Ban On Informal Health Providers Save Lives? Evidence From Malawi, Edward Okeke, Susan Godlonton

Edward Okeke

Can Institutional Deliveries Reduce Newborn Mortality? Evidence From Rwanda, Edward Okeke, A.V. Chari

Edward Okeke

Current global health policies emphasize institutional deliveries as a pathway to achieving reductions in newborn mortality in developing countries. There is however remarkably little evidence regarding a causal relationship between institutional deliveries and newborn mortality. In this paper we take advantage of a shock to institutional deliveries provided by the randomized rollout of a government performance-based financing program in Rwanda, to provide the first estimates of this causal effect. We construct an instrumental variables estimator that combines interrupted time-series and difference-in-differences approaches. We do not find any statistically significant effect of an institutional birth on either 7- or 30-day mortality …

Brain Drain: Do Economic Conditions “Push” Doctors Out Of Developing Countries?, Edward Okeke

Edward Okeke

Health worker migration is an issue of first order concern in global health policy circles and continues to be the subject of much policy debate. In this paper, we contribute to the discussion by studying the impact of economic conditions on the migration of physicians from developing countries. To our knowledge, this is one of the first papers to do so. A major contribution of this paper is the introduction of a new panel dataset on migration to the US and the UK from 31 sub-Saharan Africa countries. The data spans the period 1975-2004. Using this data, we estimate the …

The Price Sensitivity Of Medicare Beneficiaries: A Regression Discontinuity Approach., Thomas Buchmueller, Kyle Grazier, Richard Hirth, Edward Okeke

Edward Okeke

We use 4 years of data from the retiree health benefits program of the University of Michigan to estimate the effect of price on the health plan choices of Medicare beneficiaries. During the period of our analysis, changes in the University's premium contribution rules led to substantial price changes. A key feature of this ‘natural experiment’ is that individuals who had retired before a certain date were exempted from having to pay any premium contributions. This ‘grandfathering’ creates quasi-experimental variation that is ideal for estimating the effect of price. Using regression discontinuity methods, we compare the plan choices of individuals …

Do Higher Salaries Lower Physician Migration?, Edward Okeke

Edward Okeke

It is believed that low wages are an important reason why doctors and nurses in developing countries migrate, and this has led to a call for higher wages for health professionals in developing countries. In this paper, we provide some of the first estimates of the impact of raising health workers’ salaries on migration. Using aggregate panel data on the stock of foreign doctors in 16 OECD countries, we explore the effect of a wage increase programme in Ghana on physician migration. We find evidence that 6 years after the implementation of this programme, the foreign stock of Ghanaian doctors …

What Is The Price Of Prevention? New Evidence From A Field Experiment., Edward Okeke, Akinfolarin Adepiti, Kayode Ajenifuja

Edward Okeke

Aids Treatment And Mental Health: Evidence From Uganda, Edward Okeke, Glenn Wagner

Edward Okeke

Increased access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) in developing countries over the last decade is believed to have contributed to reductions in HIV transmission and improvements in life expectancy. While numerous studies document the effects of ART on physical health and functioning, comparatively less attention has been paid to the effects of ART on mental health outcomes. In this paper we study the impact of ART on depression in a cohort of patients in Uganda entering HIV care. We find that twelve months after beginning ART, the prevalence of major and minor depression in the treatment group had fallen by approximately …

Workers On The Margin: Who Drops Health Coverage When Prices Rise?, Edward Okeke, Richard Hirth, Kyle Grazier

Edward Okeke

We revisit the question of price elasticity of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) take-up by directly examining changes in the take-up of ESI at a large firm in response to exogenous changes in employee premium contributions. We find that, on average, a 10% increase in the employee’s out-of-pocket premium increases the probability of dropping coverage by approximately 1%. More importantly, we find heterogeneous impacts: married workers are much more price-sensitive than single employees, and lower-paid workers are disproportionately more likely to drop coverage than higher-paid workers. Elasticity estimates for employees below the 25th percentile of salary distribution in our sample are nearly …

Too Cold For A Jog? Weather, Exercise, And Socioeconomic Status, Daniel Eisenberg, Edward Okeke

Edward Okeke

This study examines how exercise responds to plausibly exogenous "price shocks," in the form of weather conditions. Most notably, we find that within cold temperature ranges, a decrease in past-month temperature causes a significant decrease in past-month exercise, and this effect is generally larger for lower education and income groups. In large part this differential by socioeconomic group appears to be due to smaller increases in indoor activity during cold weather. These results suggest that interventions and policies aiming to increase exercise participation, particularly among lower socioeconomic populations, could do so in part by increasing the availability and attractiveness of …

Insurer Competitive Strategy And Enrollment In Newly Offered Preferred Provider Organizations (Ppo), Richard Hirth, Kyle Grazier, Michael Chernew, Edward Okeke

Edward Okeke

While early PPO growth coincided with growth of managed care generally, recent growth has come primarily at the expense of other managed care plans. Little is known about the micro behavior underlying these trends. In 2005, University of Michigan employees were offered PPOs for the first time by vendors who also offered other plans. PPOs helped the offering vendors maintain or grow their total enrollment share. PPOs were most attractive to workers who had previously chosen less managed plans. Because PPOs drew few enrollees from HMOs, there was little evidence of a backlash against managed care in the context of …