Managed care, with its restrictions on patient and provider autonomy, has dominated the delivery of healthcare in the US over the last decade. The latest model of managed care has focused on disease management programs, which outline optimal cost-effective processes for care, built on...

Japanese clinical trials have been drastically changing in response to the implementation of the International Conference on Harmonisation - Good Clinical Practice (ICH-GCP) guideline in 1997. The most important aim of the new guideline is to standardise the quality of clinical trials in the US,...

Public choice theory postulate that agents in a non-market setting are instrumentally rational and selfish. However, this approach creates some problems related to the raison d'etre of the normative public choice research programme. This paper considers interaction in two different environments,...

Utilitarians, egalitarians, prioritarians, and sufficientarians each provide examples of situations demonstrating, often compellingly, that a sensible ethical observer must adopt their view and reject the others. We argue, to the contrary, that an attractive ethic is eclectic, in the sense of...

William Vickrey, Nobel Laureate in 1996, made many significant contributions to economics. Paradoxically, his work can be considered both as the epitome of orthodoxy and as profoundly heterodox. This article reviews some of Vickrey’s major writings in fields as varied as the macroeconomics of...