2021-22 "COVID-19 Response and Emergency Medical Services in South and Southeast Asia—Public and Private Roles"

The Stanford King Center on Global Development’s Academic Year Part-Time Research Assistant Program connects King Center faculty affiliates and affiliated researchers with undergraduate and master's students committed to providing research support for up to 15 hours per week during fall, winter, and spring quarters. 

Students have the opportunity to engage in world-class research and have real-world impact. Undergraduate student research assistants earn $17.50 per hour and master's student research assistants earn $25 per hour. Research assistants can work a maximum of 15 hours per week.  Students must be enrolled full-time to participate.  

RESEARCH PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

This research project extends an ongoing economics research project on public and private roles in the health sector into the realm of pandemic response and emergency medical services in Southeast and South Asia. Building on a few preliminary case studies and econometric analyses of Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), this work will deepen and broaden quantitative and qualitative research on the historical and evolving roles of public and private organizations in testing and caring for COVID-19 patients, delivery of vaccines, and in emergency medical services, including conducting virtual interviews with experts in the region who study this topic. The analyses will inform comparison of state and non-state organizations, for-profit and not-for-profit, in health and medical care compared to education services in low- and middle-income countries in Asia, in comparative global perspective.

The research seeks to explore whether patterns of contracting-out service delivery for “local public goods” like population health, basic medical care, and compulsory schooling quality, are correlated locally and over time; whether the trends help to explain trends in disparities (urban/rural, gender, etc.); and whether patterns of development follow what an extended model of “The Proper Scope of Government” (Hart, Shleifer and Vishny 1997) predicts about mixed-ownership markets including private nonprofits. Research questions include: What explains differential patterns in public and private roles in pandemic response and EMS system development for given localities over time, and between these and other services at national and regional levels? Are services and payments for them clearly defined in contracts and are providers held accountable for outcomes? Is there a private for-profit vs nonprofit distinction in regulations and/or in practice for in this country/region at a given point in time, is it enforced in contractual arrangements for services (e.g. any requirement of community benefits in exchange for tax exemption), and how has this changed over time? Is there any margin of as-good-as-random assignment of patients to hospitals through EMS services, and are local researchers and officials open to utilizing this variation to study differences in outcomes by provider, for different populations and especially vulnerable groups?

Research mentor: Karen Eggleston (Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute and Director, Stanford Asia Health Policy Program) 

WHAT YOU WILL DO: 

• Work independently with minimal supervision, given described tasks such a literature review, data visualization, dataset compilation, and econometric analyses
• Apply basic microeconomics and health economics to the research questions
• Weekly meetings with Professor Eggleston
• Email and zoom communication with experts in the region to deepen case studies, usually joint with Professor Eggleston