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Research Statement
Ibrahim L.C.O. Niankara
October 2015
My current research interests lies in the fields of Health economics,
applied econometrics, applied microeconomics, and the application to
Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to discrete choice
modeling in health economics.
Past Research Topics that I have worked on include: The role of Bandwagon
and Snob effects in students demand for binge drinking in college. The
Bandwagon effect and the Snob effect here are social interactions allowing
for interdependencies not mediated by markets between individual
behavior, and the behavior and characteristics of other individuals within a
given neighborhood, or reference group. Since the college environment is
one of the most dynamic social settings in which complex social interactions
take place, tools from statistical mechanics inspired models of
socioeconomic phenomena allow one to investigate the existence of the
bandwagon effect and /or the snob effect, and their influence on
preferences and attitudes towards alcohol consumption. The existence of
such interactions has significant implications, in that they have exemplifying
effects on policies intended to decrease binge drinking in the college
environment.
I also investigated the effects of risk on junior faculty scientific productivity
incentives under the academic tenure system; and looked at the role health
insurance plays in mitigating health risks in the United States by analyzing
the consistency between revealed health insurance choice and stated
preference for health insurance, as a way of testing rational choice theory
predictions. I have developed and proposed a risk based random utility
model for discrete choice analysis in health economics using non
experimental data; and studied the effects that Endogenous health
insurance preferences have on revealed health insurance choices using the
2007 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) dataset.
Research Statement
Ibrahim L.C.O. Niankara
October 2015
Research Description My current research is described in the attached
curriculum Vitae. My future research objectives, In line with the United
Nation Development Program (UNDP) goal of “good health and well-being”
set this past September 2015 for the next 15 years as part of the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs), include among other things topics of relevance
to the Efficient and Effective management of Public health Resources in
Burkina Faso through cost-effectiveness, cost-utility and cost-benefit
analysis of treatments plans and programs targeting Heart Diseases and
diseases such as Malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, yellow fever, Meningitis;
which absorb most of the Health resources Nationally. Other future
interests include the use of Bayesian Econometric methods to provide a
simple and unifying frame-work for understanding the importance of
collective interdependencies among economic actors in the emergence of
complex aggregate health behaviors and health outcomes. Sustainable
Economic development is a collective effort that requires collaborative
investigative efforts from all fields, including Sociology, economics, physics,
mathematics and public health. My research agenda sits squarely at the
nexus of these fields, in an attempt to provide policy makers with relevant
feedbacks, so as to allow for the design of effective health policy to
decrease the societal effects of major health issues.
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