Representative Paul Ryan's proposed 2012 budget has been lauded as a path to prosperity, with much attetion given to his overhaul of the medicare system. Using data from the CBO analysis of the Ryan plan, this issue brief demonstrates that any savings to the government under the revamped...

This paper is the third installment in a series (the first and second editions were in 2001 and 2005) that traces a long-term growth failure in most of the world's countries.

Representative Ryan’s proposal to replace the current Medicare systemwith a system of vouchers or premium supports has been widely described as shifting costs from the government to beneficiaries. However, the size of this shift is actually small relative to the projected increase in costs...

We study how inefficiencies of market failure may be further amplified by political choices made by interest groups created in the inefficient market. We take an occupational choice framework, where agents are endowed heterogeneously with wealth and talent. In our model, market failure due to...

The International Covenant for Economic Social and Cultural Rights, ICESCR, commits states to progressively realize the economic and social rights enumerated in the Covenant. This poses a challenge to measurement. It is not enough to assess the extent to which rights are enjoyed in a country or...

The Brazilian economy grew by 4.2 percent annually from 2004-2010, more than double its annual growth from 1999-2003 or indeed its growth rate over the prior quarter century. This growth was accompanied by a significant reduction in poverty and extreme poverty, especially after 2005, as well as...

In this study, an attempt has been made to examine the determinants of health status and curative health care of children, adults and the elderly in rural India using the NCAER-HDI (Human Development Indicator) national-level survey data for 1994. Health status is defined in terms of illness...

The paper presents estimates of maternal mortality derived from the NCAER-HDI survey (1994) for rural areas of India by broad geographical regions and by some selected background characteristics of respondents. According to these estimates, maternal mortality was 544 deaths per one lakh births...

This paper first presents evidence to show that in recent years there has been a substantial fall in fertility among illiterate women in India. Subsequently, using the data from the Human Development Profile Survey of 1994, it shows that child schooling among illiterate parents is inversely...

In rural India access to education could act as a catalyst to change. Persons acquiring education could break through some of the social and cultural norms associated with certain occupations. However, access to education and the capacity to use it for economic betterment could differ by caste...