Over the last two decades, many countries around the world have been enthusiastically embarking on the path of decentralization. Decentralization has been advocated as a powerful means to improve the provision of health care services and health outcomes in developing countries. However, due to a...

... This paper discusses solutions to important incentive problems in micro-health insurance schemes which threaten their sustainability. In particular, three issues explored are : (i) if defining household as unit of insurance always mitigates adverse selection problem; (ii) how ex ante moral...

Decentralising health services – the transfer of power and responsibility from the central to the local level – should help the poor if local resources, accountability and governance are in good shape. The process in China and India had negative effects because local governments remained...