Learning, Misallocation, and Technology Adoption: Evidence from New Malaria Therapy in Tanzania.
I study how the misallocation of new technology to individuals who have lowex postreturns 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.
University of Michigan Ross School of Business, adhvaryu@umich.edu , www.achadhvaryu.com.
Achyuta
A
Adhvaryu
ACT; Tanzania; diagnosis; malaria; social learning; technology adoption