Stanford Health Policy is a joint effort of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford School of Medicine
FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.
They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.
FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.
FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.
Also University of California at Berkeley Working Paper in Economics, September 1992: 92-202
Studies in the Economics of Aging is the fourth book in a series from the National Bureau of Economic Research that addresses economic issues in aging and retirement. Building on the research in The Economics of Aging (1989) , Issues in the Economics of Aging (1990), and Topics in the Economics of Aging (1992), this volume examines elderly population growth and government spending, life expectancy and health, saving for retirement and housing values, aging in Germany and Taiwan, and the utilization of nursing home and other long-term care.
Japanese and American economists assess the present economic status of the elderly in the United States and Japan, and consider the impact of an aging population on the economies of the two countries.
With essays on labor force participation and retirement, housing equity and the economic status of the elderly, budget implications of an aging population, and financing social security and health care in the 1990s, this volume covers a broad spectrum of issues related to the economics of aging. Among the book's findings are that workers are retiring at an increasingly earlier age in both countries and that, as the populations age, baby boomers in the United States will face diminishing financial resources as the ratio of retirees to workers sharply increases.
Because medical technology is the most important controllable component of health spending growth, the success of strategies for limiting spending growth depends upon their impact on technology dissemination. Technology assessment is fundamental to any strategy for controlling the adoption of medical technologies. Cost-effectiveness analysis holds particular promise as a method for evaluating alternative health care technologies because it explicitly incorporates costs. This paper describes how the widespread adoption of health insurance promoted the dissemination of medical technologies and how technology dissemination fueled spending growth. It then describes approaches to technology assessment and the ways in which technology assessment, in the form of cost-effectiveness analysis, can be applied to help control spending growth.