BACKGROUND In the decade after 1983, the annual growth rate of drug expenditure was about four times as high as that of per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in Shanghai. In 1993 and 1994, a drug list policy and hospital revenue capping policy were introduced in Shanghai to contain drug expenditure. We studied the impact of these two policies, as a model for similar policies in other parts of...

The indexes of multifactor productivity for two-digit manufacturing sectors prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for sectors in manufacturing have been revised and extended to cover the 1949–92 period. These indexes, also called the “KLEMS” multifactor measures, compare changes in output to changes in a composite of all the inputs used in production—capital, labor, energy inputs, nonenerg...

We study the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita together with the market capitalization (MCAP) per capita as two indicators of the effect of globalization. We find that g, the GDP per capita, as a function of m, the MCAP per capita, follows a power law with average exponent close to 1/3. In addition, the Zipf ranking approach confirms that the m for countries with initially lower values of...

Imagine a meeting convened to avert a global financial crisis where none of the finance ministers had access to reliable information on changes in the stock market, national gross domestic product or international trade flows. It is hardly conceivable. Yet the infinitely more existence-threatening planetary social and ecological crisis we refer to as 'global change' (comprising the linked issue...

Amid widespread reports of deforestation, some nations have nevertheless experienced transitions from deforestation to reforestation. In a causal relationship, the Forest Identity relates the carbon sequestered in forests to the changing variables of national or regional forest area, growing stock density per area, biomass per growing stock volume, and carbon concentration in the biomass. It qu...

This technical report illustrates the methodology adopted for the estimation of a monthly indicator of the euro area real gross domestic product. We carry out the disaggregation of the chain-linked quarterly value added from the output side for six branches of the NACE Rev. 1 Level A6 classification and from the expenditure side for the main GDP components. With the sole exception of the agricu...

Japan's level of defense expenditure relative to tbe size of its economy bas long been uniquely low among the major industrialized countries. As of 1995, Japan's expenditures stood at 0.96 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).' Even adding to this tbe approximately 0.3 percent of GDP devoted to pensions for retired personnel, the level of spending is considerably less than that of major West...

Two stylized facts about poverty in Africa motivate this article: female-headed households tend to be poorer, and poverty has been falling in the aggregate since the 1990s. These facts raise two questions. First, how have female-headed households fared? Second, what role have they played in Africa's impressive recent aggregate growth and poverty reduction? Using data covering the entire region,...

Abstract It is argued that compared with large countries, small countries rely more on trade and therefore are more likely to adopt liberal trading policies. The present paper extends this idea beyond the conventional trade openness measures by analyzing the relationship between country size and the number of documents required to export and import, a measure of trade facilitation. Three import...