Dr. Okeke is a physician and a health economist whose primary research interests lie in the area of global health, with a particular interest in Africa. His work spans three substantive areas within global health. First, he studies the economics of preventive care use in developing countries with current applications to cervical cancer screening in Nigeria and HIV testing in Malawi. Second, he studies global health worker labor markets. For example, he has studied the impact of economics shocks and wage increases on health care worker migration. Third, he studies maternal and infant health in developing countries. His current work evaluates the effects of policies promoting institutional deliveries on maternal and infant outcomes. In the past, Dr. Okeke has also worked on employer-sponsored health insurance markets in the US. Prior to joining RAND, Edward was a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Health Economics and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He holds an MD from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria, an M.A. in Applied Economics and a Ph.D. in Health Policy (Economics) from the University of Michigan.
Articles
AIDS Treatment and Mental Health: Evidence from Uganda (with Glenn Wagner), Social Science and Medicine (forthcoming) (2013)
Increased access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) in developing countries over the last decade is believed...
What is the Price of Prevention? New Evidence from a Field Experiment. (with Akinfolarin Adepiti and Kayode Ajenifuja), Journal of Health Economics. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.10.001 (2012)
How does increasing access to treatment affect the demand for preventive testing? In this paper...
The Price Sensitivity of Medicare Beneficiaries: A Regression Discontinuity Approach. (with Thomas Buchmueller, Kyle Grazier, and Richard Hirth), Health Economics (2011)
We use 4 years of data from the retiree health benefits program of the University...
Workers on the Margin: Who Drops Health Coverage when Prices Rise? (with Richard Hirth and Kyle Grazier), Inquiry (2010)
We revisit the question of price elasticity of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) take-up by directly examining...
Too Cold for a Jog? Weather, Exercise, and Socioeconomic Status (with Daniel Eisenberg), The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy (2009)
This study examines how exercise responds to plausibly exogenous "price shocks," in the form of...
Working Papers
Hospital Births, Adverse Selection And Infant Mortality: Evidence from Rwanda (with A.V. Chari) (2013)
In this paper we provide causal estimates of the effect of an institutional birth on...
African Doctor Migration: Are Economic Shocks to Blame?, SSRN Working Paper (Revise and Resubmit) (2011)
It is widely believed that poor economic conditions in developing countries contribute to the migration...