12th DOIS Research Seminar: Dr. Satoru Okonogi (DOIS, Assistant Professor)


Date & Time: October 26 2023, 16:00-17:00
Venue: Lecture Room
Speaker: Dr. Okonogi Satoru (DOIS, Assistant Professor)
Title: Periods of Free Distribution and Demand for a Complementary Food: Experimental Evidence from Ghana

 

Abstract

In developing countries, a common way to increase adoption of health products, such as nutrient supplements, is to distribute those products for free. This is because policymakers think poor people are unable to purchase those products at the market prices. However, economic growth in developing countries makes them afford to buy those products nowadays. Therefore, a key question is whether free distribution of such products increases or prevents private investments in them. Free distribution possibly has two opposite effects on private investments. The first one is a positive effect, known as a learning effect. If health products are experimental goods and people have uncertainty in their belief about the efficacy of those products, free distribution gives them the chance to update their belief, and it can increase private investments. The second one is a negative effect, known as an anchoring effect. Free distribution may become a reference point, making it seem expensive to purchase the products at the market price. In such a case, after the end of free distribution, it reduces private investments. The objective of this study is to investigate which learning and anchoring effects are dominant in the context of a complementary food for infants in Ghana. We focus on, particularly, a relation between periods of free distribution and magnitudes of those effects. We hypothesize that longer free distribution is associated with the stronger anchoring effect.