Poor people lack access to health care with a negative impact on their dignity, human capital formation and their risk-management options. Recently an emerging movement of community-based health insurance schemes has attracted the attention of policy makers and researchers as it seems that these...

In recent years, the role of institutions for development has received considerable attention from development researchers, policy makers and practitioners. This paper reviews the evidence on the impact of institutions on growth and other development outcomes. Most of the reviewed studies find a...

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 analyzes the impact of trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) on drug prices in seven middle income countries. Applying both an econometric as well as an explorative analysis we find three key messages: First, the introduction of TRIPS in the selected countries tends to...

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...