IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v60y2014i10p2461-2477.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Subsidizing the Distribution Channel: Donor Funding to Improve the Availability of Malaria Drugs

Author

Listed:
  • Terry A. Taylor

    (Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720)

  • Wenqiang Xiao

    (Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, New York 10012)

Abstract

In countries that bear the heaviest burden of malaria, most patients seek medicine for the disease in the private sector. Because the availability and affordability of recommended malaria drugs provided by the private-sector distribution channel is poor, donors (e.g., the Global Fund) are devoting substantial resources to fund subsidies that encourage the channel to improve access to these drugs. A key question for a donor is whether it should subsidize the purchases and/or the sales of the private-sector distribution channel. We show that the donor should only subsidize purchases and should not subsidize sales. We characterize the robustness of this result to four key assumptions: the product's shelf life is long, the retailer has flexibility in setting the price, the retailer is the only level in the distribution channel, and retailers are homogeneous. This paper was accepted by Martin Lariviere, operations management .

Suggested Citation

  • Terry A. Taylor & Wenqiang Xiao, 2014. "Subsidizing the Distribution Channel: Donor Funding to Improve the Availability of Malaria Drugs," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(10), pages 2461-2477, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:60:y:2014:i:10:p:2461-2477
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2014.1910
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1910
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1910?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Awi Federgruen & Aliza Heching, 1999. "Combined Pricing and Inventory Control Under Uncertainty," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 47(3), pages 454-475, June.
    2. Kenan Arifoglu & Sarang Deo & Seyed M. R. Iravani, 2012. "Consumption Externality and Yield Uncertainty in the Influenza Vaccine Supply Chain: Interventions in Demand and Supply Sides," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(6), pages 1072-1091, June.
    3. Daly, George & Giertz, Fred J, 1972. "Welfare Economics and Welfare Reform," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(1), pages 131-138, March.
    4. Laxminarayan, Ramanan & Parry, Ian W.H. & Smith, David L. & Klein, Eili Y., 2010. "Should new antimalarial drugs be subsidized?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 445-456, May.
    5. Yuyue Song & Saibal Ray & Tamer Boyaci, 2009. "Technical Note---Optimal Dynamic Joint Inventory-Pricing Control for Multiplicative Demand with Fixed Order Costs and Lost Sales," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(1), pages 245-250, February.
    6. Xavier Drèze & David R. Bell, 2003. "Creating Win–Win Trade Promotions: Theory and Empirical Analysis of Scan-Back Trade Deals," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(1), pages 16-39, November.
    7. Shlomo Kalish & Gary L. Lilien, 1983. "Optimal Price Subsidy Policy for Accelerating the Diffusion Of Innovation," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 2(4), pages 407-420.
    8. Stephen E. Chick & Hamed Mamani & David Simchi-Levi, 2008. "Supply Chain Coordination and Influenza Vaccination," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 56(6), pages 1493-1506, December.
    9. Uri Ben-Zion & Uriel Spiegel, 1983. "Philanthropic motives and contribution policy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 117-133, January.
    10. Harish Krishnan & Roman Kapuscinski & David A. Butz, 2004. "Coordinating Contracts for Decentralized Supply Chains with Retailer Promotional Effort," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(1), pages 48-63, January.
    11. Terry A. Taylor, 2002. "Supply Chain Coordination Under Channel Rebates with Sales Effort Effects," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(8), pages 992-1007, August.
    12. Catherine Goodman & S. Patrick Kachur & Salim Abdulla & Peter Bloland & Anne Mills, 2009. "Concentration and drug prices in the retail market for malaria treatment in rural Tanzania," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(6), pages 727-742, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Biswal, Arun Kumar & Jenamani, Mamata & Kumar, Sri Krishna, 2020. "The impact of RFID adoption on donor subsidy through for-profit and not-for-profit newsvendor: Implications for Indian Public Distribution system," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    2. Stephen E. Chick & Sameer Hasija & Javad Nasiry, 2017. "Information Elicitation and Influenza Vaccine Production," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 65(1), pages 75-96, February.
    3. Paola Martin & Diwakar Gupta & Karthik V. Natarajan, 2020. "Vaccine Procurement Contracts for Developing Countries," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(11), pages 2601-2620, November.
    4. Xu, Xiaolin & Cai, Xiaoqiang & Chen, Youhua, 2011. "Unimodality of price-setting newsvendor's objective function with multiplicative demand and its applications," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(2), pages 653-661, October.
    5. Maxime C. Cohen & Ruben Lobel & Georgia Perakis, 2016. "The Impact of Demand Uncertainty on Consumer Subsidies for Green Technology Adoption," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(5), pages 1235-1258, May.
    6. Stephen E. Chick & Sameer Hasija & Javad Nasiry, 2017. "Information Elicitation and Influenza Vaccine Production," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 65(1), pages 75-96, February.
    7. Tinglong Dai & Soo-Haeng Cho & Fuqiang Zhang, 2016. "Contracting for On-Time Delivery in the U.S. Influenza Vaccine Supply Chain," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 18(3), pages 332-346, July.
    8. Leng, Mingming & Zhu, An, 2009. "Side-payment contracts in two-person nonzero-sum supply chain games: Review, discussion and applications," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 196(2), pages 600-618, July.
    9. Yang, Jian & Qi, Xiangtong, 2009. "On the design of coordinating contracts," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 581-594, December.
    10. Anil Aswani & Zuo-Jun Max Shen & Auyon Siddiq, 2019. "Data-Driven Incentive Design in the Medicare Shared Savings Program," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 67(4), pages 1002-1026, July.
    11. Fan, Jianchang & Ni, Debing & Fang, Xiang, 2020. "Liability cost sharing, product quality choice, and coordination in two-echelon supply chains," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 284(2), pages 514-537.
    12. Panos Kouvelis & Duo Shi, 2020. "Who Should Compensate the Sales Agent in a Distribution Channel?," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(11), pages 2437-2460, November.
    13. Fernando Bernstein & Yang Li & Kevin Shang, 2016. "A Simple Heuristic for Joint Inventory and Pricing Models with Lead Time and Backorders," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(8), pages 2358-2373, August.
    14. Xie, Lei & Hou, Pengwen & Han, Hongshuai, 2021. "Implications of government subsidy on the vaccine product R&D when the buyer is risk averse," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    15. Hui Zhang & Tao Huang & Tao Yan, 2022. "A quantitative analysis of risk-sharing agreements with patient support programs for improving medication adherence," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 253-274, June.
    16. Xiong‐zhi Wang & Guo‐qing Wang, 2019. "Integrating dynamic pricing and inventory control for fresh‐agri product under consumer choice," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(1), pages 96-111, March.
    17. Gurkan, M. Edib & Tunc, Huseyin & Tarim, S. Armagan, 2022. "The joint stochastic lot sizing and pricing problem," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    18. Lin Chen & Jin Peng & Zhibing Liu & Ruiqing Zhao, 2017. "Pricing and effort decisions for a supply chain with uncertain information," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(1), pages 264-284, January.
    19. Abhishek Roy & Stephen M. Gilbert & Guoming Lai, 2019. "The Implications of Visibility on the Use of Strategic Inventory in a Supply Chain," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(4), pages 1752-1767, April.
    20. Cai, Jianhu & Hu, Xiaoqing & Jiang, Feiying & Zhou, Qing & Zhang, Xiaoyang & Xuan, Liyuan, 2019. "Optimal input quantity decisions considering commitment order contracts under yield uncertainty," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 398-412.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:60:y:2014:i:10:p:2461-2477. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.