The regulatory framework in Europe does not prevent banks from taking large or controlling equity stakes in non-financial firms, potentially contributing to higher levels of bank risk and financial instability. Using a panel of European commercial banks for the period 2004-2008, we find that higher levels of equity positions in industrial firms and higher proportions of industrial firms where t...

Universal health coverage (UHC) has been defined as the desired outcome of health system performance whereby all people who need health services (promotion, prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliation) receive them, without undue financial hardship. UHC has two interrelated components: the full spectrum of good-quality, essential health services according to need, and protection from ...

The almost universal approach to the economic evaluation of health technologies is to compare the cost-effectiveness of treatments, using metrics such as the „cost per quality adjusted life year‟. This is based on the reasonable view that a prime objective of the health system is to maximize health. However, another fundamental role of universal health insurance is to protect citizens from fina...

Absence of financial protection in health is a recently diagnosed "disease" of health systems. The most obvious symptom is that families face economic ruin and poverty as a consequence of financing their health care. Mexico was one of the first countries to diagnose the problem, attribute it to lack of financial protection, and propose systemic therapy through health reform. In this article we ...

The World Health Organization's (WHO's) World Health Report 2010, "Health systems financing, the path to universal coverage," promoted universal health coverage (UHC) as an aspirational objective for country health systems. Yet, in addition to the dimensions of services and coverage, distribution of coverage in the population, and financial risk protection highlighted by the report, the conside...

Managers are responsible for providing financial statements and they might try to make a good picture of their firm's conditions. Therefore, they try to delay the disclosure of bad news and release the good news as soon as possible. The ten-dency of managers toward hiding bad news increases the stock price crash risk. The protection of investor is one of the factors that can prevent from fallin...

BACKGROUND Cancer accounts for one-fifth of the total deaths in China and brings heavy financial burden to patients and their families. Chinese government has made strong commitment to develop three types of social medical insurance since 1997 and recently, more attempts were invested to provide better financial protection. To analyze health services utilization and financial burden of insured ...

BACKGROUND As the drive towards universal coverage is gaining momentum globally, the need for assessing levels of financial health protection in countries, particularity the developing world, has increasingly become important. In Swaziland, the level of financial health protection is not clearly understood. OBJECTIVE To assess financial catastrophe and impoverishment from out-of-pocket paymen...