This paper examines political feasibility and its implications for health reform. I discuss the political obstacles to health reform in the United States, disentangling perennial barriers from contemporary constraints. I then explore major reform options and their political prospects. I argue that while incremental reform now appears to be the most feasible option, the political climate may cha...

This article explores the key issues involved in the attempts at reform of the present medical malpractice system. Investigating the effects that federal tort reform legislation would have on physicians, patients, lawyers, and the medical malpractice insurers, Dr. Gunnar succinctly outlines the issues surrounding the present "crisis in healthcare" and explores the separate interests involved. T...

It is difficult to disagree with the general argument that successful health reform requires a significant degree of policy capacity or that all players in the policy game need to move beyond self-interested advocacy. However, an overly broad definition of policy capacity is a problem. More important perhaps, health reform inevitably requires not just policy capacity but political leadership an...

This paper introduces the concept of a steepest ascent tariff reform for a small open economy. By construction, it is locally optimal in that it yields the highest gain in utility of any feasible tariff reform vector of the same length. Accordingly, it provides a convenient benchmark for the evaluation of the welfare effectiveness of other tariff reform proposals. We develop the properties of t...

.................................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction............................................................................................................................................... 4 Is there a need for reform? ...............................................................

E. H. Moore’s Retiring Address as AMS president took place in 1902. Moore had a firm commitment to both teaching and research, but the theme of his address centered on mathematics education. On the role of the AMS in education he said: “Do you not feel with me that the AMS, as the organic representative of the highest interests of mathematics in this country, should be directly related with the...

The reform of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has become an integral part of most macroeconomic stabilisation programmes implemented worldwide in recent years. The main instruments used to reform these enterprises have been divestiture and workforce downsizing. In Latin America, in particular, the pursuit of fiscal consolidation has added another important dimension to public enterprise reform. ...

The publication of a new article by “Authoritative Personage” on May 9, 2016, threw into the open two unresolved issues of Chinese policy: Who is making economic reform policy? What is the mix between reform and growth? These two unresolved issues lie behind the enormous difficulty policy-makers have had in coming up with a coherent reform strategy lately. This difficulty is most manifest in th...