All over the world, the cost of heath care delivery is increasing. This has resulted into health sector reforms calling for cost containment and quality improvements (Buchan, 2000). Healthcare delivery is unique in that it is labor intensive with expenditure on human resources accounting for 60-80% of the total recurrent costs (Shipp, 1998). The levels and skill mix of the staff employed that i...

This article analyzes how mandatory accounting disclosure is grounded on different rationales for private and public companies. It also explores technological changes, such as computerised databases and the Internet, which have recently made disclosure of company accounts by small companies potentially less costly and more valuable, thanks to electronic filing and universal online access to cre...

In the 1991 National Health Service reforms, health authorities became responsible for the health of their resident population, and they contract for health services from NHS providers - trusts and primary care services. A case study in Camden and Islington, an inner London health district, during 1996-1997 shows that contracting was directed more towards achieving financial balance than health...

Without policy reforms, the aging of the U.S. population is likely to increase the burden of the currently unfunded Social Security and Medicare systems. In this paper we build an applied general equilibrium model and incorporate the population projections made by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to evaluate the macroeconomic and welfare implications of alternative fiscal responses to t...

This paper conducts a crosscountry empirical study of the impact of institutions and agency conflicts on ownership reforms and their implications for changes in performance and efficiency. We examine two main questions. First, we evaluate the effects of certain property rights and institutional quality measures on performance and efficiency. We find that property rights and contracting rights p...

Focusing on the most liquid segment of European CDS market, this paper studies impact key standardization reforms. We document that introduction an upfront fee to standardize cash flow contracts created initial capital cost for traders, leading higher prices. This relation holds after accounting well-known determinants spreads, suggesting a separate funding channel driven by greater intensity t...

The intensity of recent turbulence in financial markets has surprised nearly everyone. This paper searches out the root causes of the crisis, distinguishing them from scapegoating explanations that have been used in policy circles to divert attention from the underlying breakdown of incentives. Incentive conflicts explain how securitization went wrong, why credit ratings proved so inaccurate, a...

Discretionary Measures of Active Labor Market Policy: The German Employment Promotion Reform in Perspective This paper provides a preliminary assessment of recent reforms of German employment promotion policy. While several recent studies analyze the impact of measures of employment promotion for the case of Germany, no comparable study exists on the aggregate level, thus precluding any assessm...

Recent scandals have called our attention to an issue, financial reporting, that we all know, privately at least, is long overdue. The issue goes far beyond fraud, as more and more financial statements require correction. Indeed, many, if not all, financial operations within corporations and government both cost far too much and do not produce the desired result. Reforms led by Congress, Attorn...

India pursued one of the largest programs of land reforms on record since the 1950s. These reforms were aimed at securing access to land for the vast majority of rural households dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. There is mixed evidence on the effect of these reforms on poverty. Moreover, the long run welfare consequences of these reforms have not been evaluated. Using across-stat...