This paper examines the Annual Progress Report on the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. The broad thrust of the government’s strategy remains creating rural growth, accelerating private sector growth in the modern economy to create employment and...

This primer aims to provide IMF macroeconomists with the essential information they need in situations where they must address issues concerning health sector policy and when they have significant macroeconomic implications. Such issues can also affect equity and growth and are fundamental to...

Using available data on the distribution of HIV/AIDS prevalence across population groups for four sub-Saharan African countries and transposing this information to household income and expenditure surveys, we simulate the impact of HIV/AIDS on poverty and inequality. We find that the epidemic...

With much healthcare publicly funded, Hong Kong's rapidly aging population will significant raise fiscal pressure over coming decades. We ask what the implications are of meeting these costs by public funding, or private funding voluntarily or through mandates. Our simulations suggest that...

Public health spending is low in emerging and developing economies relative to advanced economies and health outputs and outcomes need to be substantially improved. Simply increasing public expenditure in the health sector, however, may not significantly affect health outcomes if the efficiency...

The progress made by Moldova toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has not been uniform since 2007. Domestic economic and political crises are likely to undermine the achievement of several MDG targets set for 2010 and 2015. The goals were to reduce extreme poverty and hunger,...

This Selected Issues paper on the Slovak Republic reviews efficiency and reform of the health sector. The immediate challenge for the health care system in the Slovak Republic is to improve health sector outcomes while containing public health spending. The Slovak health care system is...