The main purpose of this work is to develop a case study assessing the recent patterns and impacts of ODA (official development assistance) and DAH (development assistance for health) to Liberia on overall government spending and domestic revenue generation as well as domestic government health...

The 2008-09 global economic crises have shown that no country is immune to external challenges. When policy controls are missing or not used efficiently, crises can reverse progress even in advanced economies. This unexpected outcome has increased concerns about the ability of governments in...

A consensus exists that rising income levels and technological development are among the key drivers of total health spending. However, determinants of public sector health expenditure are less well understood. This study examines a complex relationship across government health expenditure...

This note analyzes levels and trends of health expenditures by country, income group, and region in the context of overall government revenue, expenditure, and GDP trends between 1995 and 2010. The study uses available data from the World Health Organization's (WHO) National Health Accounts, the...

Countries vary widely with respect to the share of government spending on health, a metric that can serve as a proxy for the extent to which health is prioritized by governments. World Health Organization (WHO) data estimate that, in 2011, health's share of aggregate government expenditure in...

Many low-income countries contend with a governance syndrome characterized by a difficult combination of seeming openness, weak institutions, and strong inter-elite contestation for power and resources. In such countries, neither broad-based policy nor public management reforms are likely to be...

This paper summarizes the methodology of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project, and related analytical issues. The WGI cover over 200 countries and territories, measuring six dimensions of governance starting in 1996: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of...

This study presents two case studies, each on a current initiative of contracting for primary health services in Brazil, one for the state of Bahia, the other for the city of Rio de Janeiro. The two initiatives are not linked and their implementation has independently sprung from a search for...

The aim of Health in All Policies (HiAP) is to bring diverse sectors together to find shared solutions; it focuses on identifying 'win-win' or 'cobenefits' such that policy measures contribute not only to improved health outcomes but also to outcomes desired by other sectors, such as education,...

This paper reports on the 2009 update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2008: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism,...