POLICY QUESTION " What is the relationship between inequality and economic growth? Specifically, does income inequality hamper or foster economic growth in developing countries? " BACKGROUND As the global economy experienced rapid economic growth after World War II, an intense debate arose as to whether such growth benefited poor people and reduced income inequality or vice versa. In the 1950s,...

OBJECTIVES To calculate cigarette affordability for a number of countries using different techniques and data, to investigate trends since 1990 and to assess the appropriateness of different measures of affordability. DESIGN Two existing measures were specified. Relative income price (RIP) uses per capita gross domestic product (GDP) as the measure of income, while "minutes of labour" is base...

There are marked differences in methods used for undertaking economic evaluations across low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries. We outline the most apparent dissimilarities and reflect on their underlying reasons. We randomly sampled 50 studies from each of three country income groups from a comprehensive database of 2844 economic evaluations published between January 2012 and Ma...

This paper presents, within a framework of the Solow model, evidence that there should be two different reasons for convergence. One is due to diminishing returns to capital and the other is due to technological diffusion. This paper shows that OECD and low income countries follow a pattern of conditional convergence but middle income countries do not. This seems to imply that technological dif...

PURPOSE Access to critical care is a crucial component of healthcare systems. In low-income countries, the burden of critical illness is substantial, but the capacity to provide care for critically ill patients in intensive care units (ICUs) is unknown. Our aim was to systematically review the published literature to estimate the current ICU capacity in low-income countries. METHODS We search...

This paper presents, within a framework of the Solow model, evidence that there should be two different reasons for convergence. One is due to diminishing returns to capital and the other is due to technological diffusion. This paper shows that OECD and low income countries follow a pattern of conditional convergence but middle income countries do not. This seems to imply that technological dif...

Finding better mechanisms to enable differential pricing that reflects different degrees of willingness to pay across countries with different income levels is an important challenge for drug manufacturers and policy makers. Drug prices must be high enough to meet manufacturers' needs--covering costs and ensuring adequate investment in research and development, as well as producing a profit--bu...

Abstract In this study, we applied recently developed panel unit root and cointegration techniques to examine the long-run real income per capita and price elasticities for demand of electricity in selected Middle East and North African (MENA) countries using an annual data series from 1990 to 2011.Our main finding from the panel analysis is that the demand for electricity is highly price ela...