In the public sector in developing countries, leakage of public resources could prove detrimental to users and affect the well-being of the population. In this paper, we empirically examine the importance of leakage of government resources in the health sector in Chad and its effects on medication mark-up. We make use of data collected in Chad as part of a Health Facilities Survey organized by the World Bank in 2004. The survey covers 281 primary health care centers and hospitals and contains information on the provision of medical material, financial resources and medication allocated by the Ministry of Health (MoH) to the regional administration and primary health centers. While the regional administration is officially allocated 60% of the MoH’s non-wage recurrent expenditures, the share of the resources that actually reach the regions is estimated to be 18%. The health centers, which are the frontline providers and the entry point for the population, receive less than 1% of the MoH’s non-wage recurrent expenditures. Accounting for the endogeneity of the level of competition among health centers, we observe that leakage of government resources has a significant and negative impact on the mark-up health centers charge patients on drugs sales. Furthermore, it is estimated that had public resources earmarked for frontline providers reached them in their entirety, the number of patients seeking primary health care in Chad would have more than doubled.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by D.E.S. (Department of Economic Studies), University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy in its series Discussion Papers with number
2_2008.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health K49 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Other
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: