Many Asian countries (such as China, Singapore, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines) will experience a significant aging of their populations during the next several decades. This paper explores how these aging Asian countries are addressing and anticipating the...

This primer aims to provide IMF macroeconomists with the essential information they need in situations where they must address issues concerning health sector policy and when they have significant macroeconomic implications. Such issues can also affect equity and growth and are fundamental to...

Poverty risk is most marked for children, displaced persons and returnees, unemployed, and people with low education. Basic goals of the macroeconomic framework of the mid-term development strategy of Bosnia and Herzegovina are to reduce the overall public expenditures, lower the public debt,...

This primer aims to provide IMF macroeconomists with the essential information they need to address issues concerning health sector policy, particularly when they have significant macroeconomic implications. Such issues can also affect equity and growth and are fundamental to any strategy of...

Bolivia is a lower-middle income country, but one of the poorest in South America, with a per capita GNI of US$ 5,750 in 2013 and an average GNI growth rate of 4.4 percent during the last ten years. Nearly 36 percent of its population of 10.6 million (2013) are aged 0 to 14 years and one third...

This paper explores the structure of cross-border health purchasing between Austria and Hungary and determines the size of this phenomenon as well as the barriers to a further increase. Austrian patients may receive health care treatment in Hungary in three different ways. First, patients may...

Although the high percentage of the uninsured is an important public policy issue, discrepancies in both state and national estimates of the numbers of uninsured are reported. There is a critical need to address the methodological problem of the estimation. This study compares four advanced...

With rising healthcare expenditure and limited budgets available, countries are having to make choices about the content of health insurance plans. The views of the general population can help determine such priorities. In this article, we investigate whether preferences of the general...