In many developing countries, public patients offer payments to their doctors outside the official payment channels. We argue that the fundamental reason for these informal payments is that formal prices cannot fully differentiate patients’ various needs. We compare patient welfare and social efficiency when informal payments are allowed with the scenario when they are banned. Patient heterogen...

BACKGROUND Little research has focused on the spatial distribution of social capital, despite social capital's rising popularity in health research and policy. This study examines the neighborhood differences in social capital and the determinants that explain these differences. METHODS Five components of neighborhood social capital are identified by means of factor and reliability analyses u...

PURPOSE This study evaluated how levels of social participation change as a result of late-life widowhood. Social participation is a multidimensional construct incorporating both formal (e.g., meeting attendance, religious participation, and volunteer obligations) and informal (e.g., telephone contact and social interactions with friends) social roles. DESIGN AND METHODS Using data from the C...

BACKGROUND We examined the associations of informal (eg, family members and friends) and formal (eg, physician and visiting nurses) social support with caregiver's burden in long-term care and the relationship between the number of available sources of social support and caregiver burden. METHODS We conducted a mail-in survey in 2003 and used data of 2998 main caregivers of frail older adults...

in the almost new literature of social capital, the concept has mainly been considered domestic, while we can find social capital beyond state borders. in this article social capital has been connected to international relations through micro and macro aspects. the effect of information technology on social capital is then mentioned on both domestic and transnational scales. information technol...