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. 2014;81(4):1331-1365.
doi: 10.1093/restud/rdu020.

Learning, Misallocation, and Technology Adoption: Evidence from New Malaria Therapy in Tanzania

Achyuta Adhvaryu  1
Affiliations

Learning, Misallocation, and Technology Adoption: Evidence from New Malaria Therapy in Tanzania

Achyuta Adhvaryu. Rev Econ Stud. 2014.

Abstract

I study how the misallocation of new technology to individuals who have low ex post returns to its use affects learning and adoption behavior. I focus on antimalarial treatment, which is frequently over-prescribed in many low-income country contexts where diagnostic tests are inaccessible. I show that misdiagnosis reduces average therapeutic effectiveness, because only a fraction of adopters actually have malaria, and slows the rate of social learning due to increased noise. I use data on adoption choices, the timing and duration of fever episodes, and individual blood slide confirmations of malarial status from a pilot study for a new malaria therapy in Tanzania to show that individuals whose reference groups experienced fewer misdiagnoses exhibited stronger learning effects and were more likely to adopt.

Keywords: ACT; Tanzania; diagnosis; malaria; social learning; technology adoption.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Variation in proportion misdiagnosed across week of survey
Figure 2
Figure 2
Histogram of residual variation in malaria misdiagnosis after removing village x time fixed effects
Figure 3
Figure 3
Trends in health facility usage in treatment v. comparison districts over time
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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