Does medical insurance affect health care demand and in the end contribute to improvements in the health status? Evidence for China for the year 2004, by means of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), shows that health insurance does not affect health care demand in a significant manner....

This survey reviews models of self-reinforcing mechanisms that cause poverty to persist. Some of them examine market failure in environments where the neoclassical assumptions on markets and technology break down. Other mechanisms include institutional failure which can, by itself, perpetuate...