The authors examine the design and limitations of incentives for health care providers to serve in rural areas in developing countries. Governments face two problems: it is costly to compensate well-trained urban physicians enough to relocate to rural areas, and it is difficult to ensure quality...

Traditional approaches to pollution control emphasize the government's role in providing incentives to alter the behavior of relevant economic agents. But to exploit cost advantages at different levels of government, pollution control policies typically involve assigning a variety of...

This paper reviews the correlations and potential links between health and economic growth and summarizes the evidence on the role of government in improving health status. At the macroeconomic level, the evidence of an impact of health on growth remains ambiguous due both to difficulties in...

The author examines public economics rationales for public intervention in health insurance markets, draws on the literature of organizational design to examine alternative intervention strategies, and considers health insurance reforms in four Latin American countries -- Argentina, Brazil,...

The author presents two descriptive models of nongovernmental organizations and poses mormative questions about public polcy toward nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In situations in which optimal government intervention in a distorted or inequitable economy employs an NGO-like body, he...

The author studies the allocation-between a central government and a local authority--of responsibility for planning, financing, and operations for the delivery of health services, in the context of an incomplete contracts model. In this model, inputs are required of both the central government...