African Traditional Healers and Outcome--Contingent Contracts in Health Care

Columbia University Working Paper No. 9900-02

41 Pages Posted: 21 Jun 2000

Date Written: May 2000

Abstract

Traditional healers are a source of health care for which Africans have always paid and even with the expansion of modern medicine healers are still popular. This paper advances the unique view that traditional healers neither possess supernatural power nor do they take advantage of their clients: they use important elements of their practice to credibly deliver unobservable medical effort and therefore high quality care. An important element of their practice has previously been ignored: traditional healers use outcome-contingent contracts to deliver unobservable medical effort. This paper presents empirical evidence that, as a result of these contracts, traditional healers are popular because they provide more unobservable medical effort than other providers from which patients can choose.

JEL Classification: D8, I1

Suggested Citation

Leonard, Kenneth L., African Traditional Healers and Outcome--Contingent Contracts in Health Care (May 2000). Columbia University Working Paper No. 9900-02, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=229475 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.229475

Kenneth L. Leonard (Contact Author)

University of Maryland ( email )

Symmons Hall, Rm 2200
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-5535
United States

HOME PAGE: http://faculty.arec.umd.edu/kleonard/

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