Community based health insurance is an emerging and promising concept that has attracted the attention of policy makers as it addresses health care challenges faced by the poor. This paper discusses solutions to important incentive problems in micro-health insurance schemes which threaten their...

In 1996 the Tanzanian government initiated community health insurance schemes to improve the access to health care and to protect people against the financial cost of illness in an environment with shrinking budgets for the health sector. This study aims to evaluate the role of the community...

MRNA technology has proved in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic its breakthrough value as a basis for vaccines. There has been rapid development of highly safe, effective and robust mRNA vaccines, and these can be delivered at large scale. Yet the technology is the result of a long process of...

In the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have, among other measures, mandated the use of COVID certificates to prove vaccination, recovery or a recent negative test, and have required individuals to show certificates to access shops, restaurants, and education or workplaces. While arguments for and...

We propose a new microeconomic explanation for the divergent experiences of economies in forming human capital. We suggest that the positive effect of a longer life expectancy on human capital formation arises from two separate effects: a life expectancy effect and a prolonged intergenerational...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown far more rapidly than trade during the last two decades. As with the other prominent features of globalisation, FDI is controversial. The impact of FDI on labour markets has been of growing concern, particularly, for source countries. The deterioration...

A conventional argument in the child-labor debate is that improvements in access to schools are an effective way to reduce the labor force participation of children. It is argued that schooling competes with economic activity in the use of children's time, and enhanced access to schools,...

Children have always been part of the economic life of societies. Historical evidence indicates that the contribution of children to family income in cash or in kind has been consistently significant. Currently, the issue of child labor has become an important global development issue in...

Failure to accumulate human capital is one of the pressing problems of developing countries. Lacking human capital formation bears consequences on an economy wide level, since education contributes to labor productivity. We examine the impact of increased school enrollment with regard to...