Unannounced visits were made to health clinics in Bangladesh to determine what proportion of medical professionals were at their assigned post. Averaged over all job categories and types of facility, the absentee rate was 35 percent. The absentee rate for physicians was 40 percent at the larger...

This article presents an approach to public policy in health that comes directly from the literature on public economics. It identifies two characteristic market failures in health. The first is the existence of large externalities in the control of many infectious diseases that are mostly...

Substantial upward economic mobility in the majority of countries in Europe and Central Asia in the 2000s translated into achievements in reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. Although factors associated with upward mobility vary significantly by country, education and jobs...