We embed a lockdown choice in a simplified epidemiological model and derive formulas for the optimal lockdown intensity and duration. The optimal policy reflects the rate of time preference, epidemiological factors, the hazard rate of vaccine discovery, learning effects in the health care...

The Philippines has been experiencing unprecedented economic growth in recent years. This has fueled greater consumption among households, and greater support for the expansion of government entitlements, particularly on health and education. Behind these developments, however, is the fact that...

The study attempts to document the Philippine's experience in health devolution with focus on the Department of Health's efforts to make it work. It also aims to draw lessons and insights that are critical in assessing the country's decentralization policies and also, in informing future...

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are increasingly being utilized to meet development goals of many countries and there is much potential for PPPs to help address health inequities and advance universal health care (UHC). In support of these efforts, the paper defines PPPs and their role in the...

Financial protection of patients is considered a key component of health systems, and has been a consistent policy goal of the Department of Health. Of paramount importance in this regard are catastrophic health expenditures, which can severely restrict the access to much-needed services,...

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between globalization, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases, and associated deaths in more than 100 countries. Our ordinary least squares multivariate regressions show that countries with higher levels of socio-economic globalization...

Early non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) significantly reduced the death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, there are vast differences in how quickly governments implemented NPIs. In this paper, we analyze the role of public attention, measured as the share of daily Google searches in a...

Uniform health care delivered by a mainstream public insurer - such as the National Health Service (NHS), seldom satisfies heterogeneous demands for care, and some unsatisfied share of the population either use private health care, or purchase private insurance (PHI). One potential mechanism to...

This report is a continuation of the discussion paper of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies entitled "Inequalities in Noncommunicable Diseases in the Philippines". The first technical paper is an analysis of the current status and social determinants of noncommunicable diseases...

We study the competitive effects of restricting direct access to secondary care by gatekeeping, focusing on the informational role of general practitioners (GPs). In the secondary care market there are two hospitals choosing quality and specialisation. Patients, who are ex ante uninformed, can...