Abstract T he relationship between public sector deficits and inflation is one of the important and controversial issues in the academic literature as well as in economic policy field. On the other hand, a major objective of macroeconomic policies is to foster economic growth and to keep inflation on a low level. So keeping the price stability plays an important role in de...

BACKGROUND Malaysia's stable health care system is facing challenges with increasing medicine costs. To investigate these issues a survey was carried out to evaluate medicine prices, availability, affordability, and the structure of price components. METHODS AND FINDINGS The methodology developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Health Action International (HAI) was used. Price and ...

This chapter provides conservative estimates of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of tobacco-control policies. Using a model of the cohort of smokers alive in 1995, we find that tax increases that would raise the real price of cigarettes by 10% worldwide would cause about 42 million of these smokers to quit. This price increase would prevent a minimum of 10 million tobacco-related deaths...

Broadly speaking, interventions to reduce the costs associated with price volatility can be divided into two types. First, there are interventions that reduce price volatility, such as improving market information (Box 7). Second, there are interventions that accept price volatility as given and attempt to cope with it. These coping mechanisms can be either before (ex ante) or after (ex post) t...