Health Economics in Development

Abstract

The papers in this collection span 21 years of thinking and writing about health economics, first at the Pan American Health Organization (1982-1990) and then at the World Bank (1990-2002, including two years, 1999-2001, on secondment to the World Health Organization). They are divided into six general topics, which together touch on several of the major issues in this field. Chapters 1 through 3 concern the connection between health, particularly public health, and economics-a connection that has occupied much of my professional effort, in part because I started to work on the subject in an organization dominated by public health professionals, and only later moved to an organization dominated by other economists. Chapters 4 through 6 treat several different aspects of equity, while chapters 7 through 17 deal with effectiveness and efficiency, first in general terms and then with specific attention to communicable diseases and to malnutrition. Equity and efficiency are among the main issues in any branch of economics, and-as several chapters illustrate-they often cannot be sharply separated. Chapters 18 through 20 concern how health is, and how it should be, paid for-questions that involve both equity and efficiency.