This Selected Issues paper on United States 2012 Article IV Consultation discusses rebound of manufacturing production. The U.S. share in global manufacturing production declined through most of the past three decades, but it has stabilized since the Great Recession. It currently represents...

The United States and Canada are rather similar in social orientation. However, this is not reflected in health care. Firstly, Canada implemented the principle of universal coverage much earlier than the United States. Secondly, U.S. health care continues to rely much more on private funding and...

Little comparative research exists on health experiences and conditions of minority groups in Canada and the United States, despite both countries having a racially diverse population with a signifi cant proportion of immigrants. This article explores race and immigrant disparities in health and...

In Building Genetic Medicine, Shobita Parthasarathy shows how, even in an era of globalization, national context is playing an important role in the development and use of genetic technologies. Focusing on the development and deployment of genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer (known as...

This paper assesses the performance of the United States health system in an international context and discusses potential directions for reform. The US health system is unique among OECD countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector for both financing and delivery of health care. The...

The United States has state of the art technology and world renowned expertise in medical treatment, yet in terms of healthcare it shows a dramatically poor performance in relation to the other industrialized countries. This situation is surprising, since one would expect that a free market...

Why is Europe's employment rate almost 10 percent lower than that of the United States? This "jobs gap" has typically been blamed on the rigidity of European labor markets. But in <i>Services and Employment</i>, an international group of leading labor economists suggests quite a different explanation....

Despite the current push toward the practice of evidence-based medicine and comparative effectiveness research, clinicians' decisions may be influenced not only by evidence, but also by cognitive biases. A cognitive bias describes a tendency to make systematic errors in certain circumstances...