This book provides a multi-disciplinary framework for developing and analyzing health sector reforms, based on the authors' extensive international experience. It offers practical guidance - useful to policymakers, consultants, academics, and students alike - and stresses the need to take account of each country's economic, administrative, and political circumstances. The authors explain how to design effective government interventions in five areas - financing, payment, organization, regu...

This primer explains why macroeconomists need to be concerned with issues of health policy and elaborates the essential information that a macroeconomist should know in providing inputs to discussions on health sector policy. The primer illustrates how these issues and the range of appropriate policy options may differ depending on the state of development of an economy and the particular approach taken by a country in structuring its health system. The primer also highlights the appropria...

Understanding poverty and what to do about it, is perhaps the central concern of all of economics. Yet the lay public almost never gets to hear what leading professional economists have to say about it. This volume brings together twenty-eight essays by some of the world leaders in the field, who were invited to tell the lay reader about the most important things they have learnt from their research that relate to poverty. The essays cover a wide array of topics: the first essay is about h...

Upon signing the Millennium Declaration in 2000, the international community committed itself to eight development goals with timebound targets and measurable indicators. The third of these eight goals was to "promote gender equality and empower women". The third Millennium Development Goal (MDG3) in the Millennium Declaration has spurred national and international efforts to improve women's situation around the globe. Equality for Women: Where Do We Stand on Millennium Goal 3? tracks co...

While the Obama administration's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has expanded health care coverage for millions of Americans, it has fallen short in offering universal health care to all. In Health Care as a Right of Citizenship, Gunnar Almgren argues that the ACA's primary significance is not in its expansion of health care entitlements but in its affirming by an act of Congress the idea that comprehensive health care must be available to all as a right of citize...

The Global Monitoring Report 2015/2016, produced by the World Bank Group in partnership with the International Monetary Fund, comes at an inflection point in both the setting of global development goals and the demographic trends affecting those goals. This year marks the end of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the launching of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while the World Bank Group has in parallel articulated the twin goals of sustainably ending extreme poverty and...

This book analyses the wave of competition-oriented reform by comparing "internal market reform" (proposed in publicly-funded health care systems) with "managed competition reform" (proposed in systems with a mixture of public/private financing) and the role of "managed care" in each of these reform theories. International Health Care Reform clearl

Health Care in Canada examines the challenges faced by the Canadian health care system, a subject of much public debate. In this book Katherine Fierlbeck provides an in-depth discussion of how health care decisions are shaped by politics and why there is so much disagreement over how to fix the system.Many Canadians point to health care as a source of national pride; others are highly critical of the system's shortcomings and call for major reform. Yet meaningful debate ca...

Regulation is often thought of as an activity that restricts behaviour and prevents the occurrence of certain undesirable activities, but the influence of regulation can also be enabling or facilitative, as when a market could potentially be chaotic if uncontrolled. This Handbook provides a clear and authoritative discussion of the major trends and issues in regulation over the last thirty years, together with an outline of prospective developments. It brings together contributionsfrom lea...

America is the one of the wealthiest nations on earth. So why do so many Americans struggle to make ends meet? Why is it so difficult for those who start at the bottom to reach the middle class? And why, if a rising economic tide lifts all boats, have middle-class incomes been growing so slowly? Social Democratic America explains how this has happened and how we can do better. Lane Kenworthy convincingly argues that we can improve economic security, expand opportunity, and ensure ...

Medicare has been a crucial part of Canadian identity for nearly fifty years, and it stands in marked contrast to the US health system. But these facts alone do not protect it from dismissive swipes and criticisms, claims that the system is unsustainable, and even proposals to change medicare’s fundamentals. In Canadian Medicare, Stephen Duckett and Adrian Peetoom show that the shared values underpinning medicare still provide a sound basis for the system’s design.While me...

• Why is productivity higher in cities? • Does urbanization cause growth or does growth cause urbanization? • Do countries achieve rapid growth or high incomes without urbanization? • How can policy makers reap the benefits of urbanization without paying too high a cost? • Does supporting urbanization imply neglecting rural areas? • Why do so few governments welcome urbanization? • What should governments do to improve housing conditions in cities as they urbanize? • Are innovations in housin...