Many of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries use global budgeting to control all or certain portions of their health care expenditures. Although the use of global budgets as a cost-containment tool has not been implemented in the United States in any comprehensive way, recent health care reform initiatives have increased the need for research into such tools. In g...

Statistics from several Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries on consumption and cost of health care services, physician workload, and physician earnings are presented. Data are analyzed according to type of physician payment used: fee for service, per case, capitation, or salary. Incentives theoretically embodied in each payment method are often offset by other factor...

In 2004, U.S. health care spending per capita was 2.5 times greater than health spending in the median Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) country and much higher than health spending in any other OECD country. The United States had fewer physicians, nurses, hospital beds, doctor visits, and hospital days per capita than the median OECD country. Health care prices and h...

This article uses recently published time series data for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries to estimate income elasticities for health care expenditures. Several different models and alternative specifications are examined to determine the sensitivity and robustness of the estimated relationships. Income is the dominant-determinant of health care spending and l...

Tobacco advertising is a public health issue if these activities increase smoking. Although public health advocates assert that tobacco advertising does increase smoking, there is significant empirical literature that finds little or no effect of tobacco advertising. In this paper, these prior studies are examined more closely with several important insights emerging from this analysis. This pa...

regional agreements can facilitate the integration of world economies by opening the borders to the trade development while accelerating technological changes and maintaining the economic growth. trade potential is defined as the trade that could be achieved at an optimum trade frontier with the open and frictionless trade possible through regional agreements based on the current level of trade...

E conomic integration among countries has continued to deepen over the past decade. This is especially visible at the regional level, with the escalation of Regional Integration Agreements (RIAs) ranging from Free Trade Areas (FTAs) to Customs Unions (CUs). Nowadays, many developing countries have entered a new regional integration agreement with developed and developing countries. S...

Financial development is one of the pillars of economic development and growth at national level. While it improves revenue at macro level, its effect on distribution of wealth or income inequality and poverty is unknown. Therefore, the present paper is an analytical attempt to analyze the effects of financial development on poverty along with the factors effective in poverty in selected member...

BACKGROUND The Japanese and Korean healthcare systems are very similar and thus, they have the same problems and weaknesses. This study discusses the problems and proposes complementary solutions based on the results of a comparative analysis of conditions in the healthcare systems of the two countries. METHODS This article presents a comparative analysis of the healthcare status of the two c...

BACKGROUND Rankings from the World Health Organization (WHO) place the US health care system as one of the least efficient among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Researchers have questioned this, noting simplistic or inappropriate methodologies, poor measurement choice, and poor control variables. Our objective is to re-visit this question by using newer m...