Bribery in Health Care in Peru and Uganda / Jennifer Hunt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hunt, Jennifer.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w13034.

NBER working paper series no. w13034

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2007.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Print version record

April 2007.