Background Over the last decade there has been an increase in healthcare expenditures while at the same time the inequity in distribution of resources has grown. These two issues have urged the researchers to review the determinants of healthcare expenditures. In this study, we surveyed the determinants of health expenditures in Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) countries.   Methods We us...

The scientific debate on the relation between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and self reported indices of life satisfaction is still open. In a well-known finding, Easterlin reported no significant relationship between happiness and aggregate income in time-series analysis. However, life satisfaction appears to be strictly monotonically increasing with income when one studies this relation at a p...

The main goal of the paper is to investigate whether real GDP follows a trend stationary or a different stationary process. Our hypothesis is that real output is characterized by a non-linear mean reverting process. It is flexible Fourier stationary unit root test proposed by Enders and Lee (2004, 2009) to assess the nonstationary properties of the real GDP per capita that has been applied for ...

This paper employs the quadratic directional output distance function to derive shadow prices of China’s aggregate carbon emissions at the province level between 1997 and 2010. The empirical results indicate that the national weighted average shadow price presents an “N-shape” curve across the sample period, experiencing the initial phase of growth followed by a phase of deterioration, and then...

We analyze the dependence of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP ) per capita growth rates on changes in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). For the period 1999–2004 for all countries in the world, we find on average that an increase of CPI by one unit leads to an increase of the annual GDP per capita growth rate by 1.7%. By regressing only the European countries with transition economies, we f...

BACKGROUND Trends and predictors of domestic spending from public sources provide national authorities and international donors with a better understanding of the HIV financing architecture, the fulfillment of governments' commitments and potential for long-term sustainability. METHODS We analyzed government financing of HIV using evidence from country reports on domestic spending. Panel data...