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...

In Canada, health care reform is underway to address escalating costs, access and quality of care issues, and existing personnel shortages in various health disciplines. One response of the nursing profession to these stimuli has been the development of the advanced practice nurse, namely, the nurse practitioner (NP). NPs are in an excellent position to address current shortcomings through incr...

BACKGROUND Accounting-that is, standardized measurement, public reporting, performance evaluation and managerial control-is commonly seen to provide the core infrastructure for quality improvement in healthcare. Yet, accounting successfully for quality has been a problematic endeavor, often producing dysfunctional effects. This has raised questions about the appropriate role for accounting in a...

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. The present paper reviews key issues in pension design and pe...

Press releases (PR) serve as an important tool by which political figures (and business) communicate their messages to news editors and journalists, which in turn deliver it to their audience. Indeed, much of the media coverage of political events is based on, responds to or quotes press releases submitted by politicians. With the increasing number of PR communications it is important to provid...

Race, Reform, and the Regulation of the Electoral Process: Recurring Puzzles in American Democracy is the first volume in Cambridge University Press’s Cambridge Studies in Election Law and Democracy series. It offers a critical reevaluation of three fundamental and interlocking themes in American democracy: the relationship between race and politics; the performance and reform of election syste...

The constitutional reform of telecommunications approved in 2013 offered a historic opportunity to fix and restructure Mexico's anemic telecommunications sector. While the original reform initiative seemed to address key problems at the root of the dysfunctional system, the secondary laws have been widely criticized by public policy experts and human rights advocates. Beyond issues regarding fr...

This paper assesses how the particular form of interactions between the state and the market may have had its impact on China’s overall success in the past two decades in economic reform and development. In doing so, the question of development economics, i.e., the role of the state and the market in development, is discussed in a context of transition economics. Some key components of China’s ...

tive workers. This article Summary involves introducing a fundamentally new describes two new methods for kind of pension formula. estimating the career profile In order to assess the effect of Social This article presents two broad of earnings for representative Security reform on current and future approaches to creating representative workers. It then compares the results of those new method...

Social insurance reforms that have been instituted in rapid succession in recent years have established a common orientation of reduced benefits instead of rising insurance premiums. For example, in medical system reforms carried out over the past two years, insurance benefit expenses were practically reduced by, for example, an increase in insured copayments and a higher eligibility age for El...