Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia have reformed the ways health insurance and health care are organized and delivered, have extended formal coverage to previously marginalized groups, and have tried to finance this extension fairly. Each has reformed health insurance differently.Jack...

This article examines rationales for public intervention in health insurance markets from the perspective of public economics. It draws on the literature of organizational design to examine alternative public intervention strategies, including issues of contracting, purchaser provider splits,...

This paper examines the design of social investment funds (sifs) and explores the ways they affect agents' incentives to propose, select, and implement good projects. Compared with other forms of decentralized service provision, sifs possess features of administratively delegated authority and...

In an earlier article, the authors outline some reasons for the disappointingly small effects of primary health care programs and identified two weak links standing between spending and increased health care. The first was the inability to translate public expenditure on health care into real...

The authors examine the design and limitations of incentives for health care providers to serve in rural areas in developing countries. Governments face two problems: it is costly to compensate well-trained urban physicians enough to relocate to rural areas, and it is difficult to ensure quality...

This paper examines the appropriate taxation of financial services under a broad-based consumption tax. It is assumed that the underlying objective of the consumption tax is to maintain undistorted prices between current and future consumption (i.e. to impose no distortion on savings decisions)...

I study the use of risk adjusters as a regulatory instrument for combatting cream-skimming incentives in a private health insurance market. It is assumed that insurance coverage is mandatory for all individuals, and that insurers must charge community-rated premiums - i.e., premiums independent...

The paper examines the nature of health insurance contracts when insurance companies are forced to pool high and low risk individuals. Insureres have an incentive to design contracts so as to attract only better brisks, and equilibrium contracts are generally characterised by less coevrage and...