For a long time economists have tended to ignore health as a relevant factor of production and important determinant of economic growth. The widely observed positive relationship between health expenditures and economic growth was considered the result of a strong positive income effect....

Prebisch and Singer (henceforth PS) have initiated several debates in economics, which have generated much research. Some of these debates may have converged to a compromise, whereas others are much less researched. We briefly summarize them in the next section in order to point out that the...