“Incentives for Preventive Health Care Provision: the Brazilian case,” Umberto Mignozzetti, NYU

ISPS EXPERIMENTS WORKSHOP

Abstract: Mosquito-borne diseases are among the leading causes of death in humans. The recent Zika virus epidemics highlight the dangers of the Aedes Aegypti, especially for infants and pregnant woman. Since the efforts to combat the epidemic are usually driven by community-based health interventions, I propose a field experiment to measure how to optimally incentivize the community health care agents in Brazil. The experiment will consist of hired and trained subjects to visit houses and help residents to identify Aedes Aegypti breeding sites. I will randomly assign performance monetary rewards and pro-social incentives to subjects. Their performance will be monitored using cell phone data and position. After the intervention, I will apply a post-treatment survey, and during six months I will monitor the incidence of diseases transmitted by the Aedes Aegypti (mainly Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya). My goal is to measure the impact of the overall intervention, and also to find the optimal combination of incentives to maximize the benefits of these policies.

Umberto Mignozzetti is a PhD Candidate at the Wilf Family Department of Politics, New York University. His work concentrates in the fields of Comparative Political Economy and International Politics, investigating how institutional design affects incentives and welfare. In his recent working papers, Mignozzetti studies how electoral systems and competition affects corruption and how clientelism influences welfare in Brazilian municipalities.