Barack Obama released in February, called " A New Era of Responsibility, " is as much a philosophy of government as a fiscal action plan. Gone is the Ronald Reagan view that " government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. " Obama rightly sees an expanded role for government as vital to meeting the 21st-century challenge of sustainable development. The scientific disc...

Background Both rising healthcare costs and the global financial crisis have fueled a search for policy tools in order to avoid unsustainable future financing of essential health benefits. The scope of essential health benefits (the range of services covered) and depth of coverage (the proportion of costs of the covered benefits that is covered publicly) are corresponding variables in determini...

Background Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) pose a formidable health and development challenge for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, translating this challenge into resource allocation is seriously constrained by a lack of country specific evidence on NCD financing and its distributional implications. This study estimated expenditures associated with NCDs in Mongolia and their ...

Countries vary widely with respect to the share of government spending on health, a metric that can serve as a proxy for the extent to which health is prioritized by governments. World Health Organization (WHO) data estimate that, in 2011, health's share of aggregate government expenditure averaged 12% in the 170 countries for which data were available. However, country differences were strikin...

How does the magnitude of the output response to a change in government spending vary over the business cycle? What are the welfare effects of fiscal shocks? This paper studies the state-dependence of the output and welfare effects of shocks to government purchases in a DSGE model with a number of real and nominal frictions and a rich fiscal financing structure. Both the output multiplier (the ...

Higher health care prices in the United States are a key reason that the nation's health spending is so much higher than that of other countries. Our study compared physicians' fees paid by public and private payers for primary care office visits and hip replacements in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We also compared physicians' incomes net of pra...

Guinea-Bissau is a fragile state with significant development challenges, including limited fiscal space, debt vulnerabilities and poor governance. After years of political turmoil delayed reforms, in 2021 the authorities started implementation an ambitious consolidation program to ensure sustainability while creating space address developmental needs. A Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) disbursement...

Over the past decade, infrastructure issues intermittently have moved toward the forefront of the domestic policy agenda. The coming year promises to intensify debate. By September 1991, Congress must re-authorize the federal highway program. Unlike past re-authorizations, this time Congress almost certainly will have to set new priorities and incorporate new principles of cost sharing for high...

Expenditures for social welfare under public law amounted to $955.9 billion in fiscal year 1989. an increase of 7.9 percent over the previous year. The 1989 amount represented 18.6 percent of the national output of goods and services, as measured by the gross national product (GNP). Social insurance programs accounted for about one-half of all expenditures, followed in importance by the educati...