Dr. Mahal?s research uses economic analyses to influence public health policy in developing countries. He is especially interested in policy issues related to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, ageing, resource allocation in the health sector, decentralization and empowerment, and alcohol consumption.
One of his recent projects examined whether public sector health subsidies in India were benefiting the poor and low-caste individuals. A second recent project (sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme) exploited variations in state-level alcohol policy in India to explore the effectiveness of alternate policy options ? such as prohibition, tax policy, and age-limits ? in influencing alcohol consumption.
More recently, Dr. Mahal has begun work on estimating and on developing newer techniques for estimating (and projecting) the health care costs of an ageing population.