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This chapter attempts to study the long-term determinants of public and private healthcare expenditure in Hong Kong, by employing time series data over the period from 1990 to 2017. We find that income is not a determinant of either public or private spending per capita on healthcare services. Rather, a higher proportion of elderly will raise public expenditure on health and private spending even more. The share of children within the population will conversely decrease both public and private spending. Results also show that the rising density of doctors decreases both public and private per capita healthcare spending, showing that the supplier-induced demand problem is not an issue in Hong Kong.

The chapter is devoted to the factors aimed at optimizing the partnership of public and private sectors in the sphere of public infrastructure development. In modern conditions of economic slowdown and budget consolidation in Russia, the infrastructure has become the most important driver of economic growth and public–private partnership (PPP) – the most perspective form of cooperation of public and private investors of infrastructure projects. PPP interpretation as a structural relationship of economic system allows the authors to model optimal combination of formal and informal institutions in order to stimulate long-term economic growth. It becomes promising to model replacement of budget funds by private investment to ensure positive impact on the Russian development despite the budget consolidation. It could only be achieved in the case of formal institutionalization of appropriate conditions for private investors as to low transactional costs and attractive financial parameters. There have been determined some PPP standards connected with public infrastructure projects in order to reduce capital expenditures of the budget funds and increase the inflow of private investment. The authors have managed to obtain model estimates and graphic interpretation of government expenditures’ efficiency increase that could help to structure the fiscal conditions to induce positive multiplier effect as a result of PPP forms improvement in the public infrastructure development.

In the spirit of ‘Europe of the Regions’, local authorities are responsible for responding to the main interests, needs and preferences of the country’s citizens. Regional and local administrative authorities provide citizens with the necessary public goods, which reflect the trend towards ‘glocalisation’ in public administration at the European level, more significantly in the states in which the political system recently became democratic. With this background, the effectiveness of local self-government depends not only on local authorities’ decision-making freedom but also on (financial) support for it through decentralisation, and the member states of the European Union (EU) employ different strategies to achieve the same goal, with varying degrees of success. Within this context, our chapter offers a comparative analysis of the administrative, financial and local self-government decentralisation in member states, which include the southern and eastern regions on the outer edges of the EU. The general goal of our study is to identify the main trends in the present administrations and their challenges, as well as best practices that can offer lessons to other member states which are reforming their administration through decentralisation. In addition to the identified challenges, solutions and best practices, our study reveals a tendency towards consolidation at the level of regional government not only in the terms of legal responsibility but also of administrative budgets, thus generating an assumption of improvement in the general quality of governance in the member states.

This chapter provides an assessment of the sustainability of Ireland's health care system. It starts by describing the historical development of the Irish system and identifying key features of the current system that raise potential challenges for sustainability. It then provides an analysis of recently compiled and up-to-date data on trends in health care expenditures. A number of specific demand and supply side challenges to sustainability are then described and discussed. This is followed by an examination of recent and current reforms to the health care system, focussing on their likely impact on sustainability, as well as a discussion of how health economics has and can inform policy, practice and debate. We also discuss the potential implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for the Irish system.

Purpose: We estimate national health expenditures on prevention using precise definitions, a transparent methodology, and a subdivision of the estimates into components to aid researchers in applying their own concepts of prevention activities.

Methodology/Approach: We supplemented the National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA) with additional data to identify national spending on primary and secondary prevention for each year from 1996 to 2004 across eight spending categories.

Findings: We estimate that NHEA expenditures devoted to prevention grew from $83.2 billion in 1996 to $159.8 billion in 2004, in current dollars. As a share of NHEA, this represents an increase from 7.8 percent in 1996 to 8.6 percent in 2004. This share peaked at 9 percent in 2002 and then declined due to reductions in public health spending as a percent of NHEA between 2002 and 2004. Primary prevention represents about half the expenditures, consisting largely of public health expenditures – the largest prevention element.

Originality/Value of Paper: Our 2004 estimate that 8.6 percent of NHEA goes to prevention is nearly three times as large as the commonly cited figure of 3 percent, but depends on the definitions used: our estimate falls to 8.1 percent when the research component is excluded, 5.1 percent when consideration is limited to primary prevention plus screening, 4.2 percent for primary prevention alone, and 2.8 percent if we count only public health expenditures. These findings should contribute to a more informed discussion of our nation's allocation of health care resources to prevention.

The relative size of the State in industrialized economies has increased dramatically during the past century giving rise to legitimate fears that such a trend might end up having an adverse impact on growth. This chapter explores the relationship between the development of government activities and economic growth. It starts by evoking problems related to the measurement of the public sector before reviewing statistical evidence on the long-term growth of the share of the State in the economy. It then provides a number of explanations for this phenomenon including those pertaining to the functioning of the political system itself thereby pointing toward inefficiencies. The next step is to explore the principal avenues along which government interventions can positively or negatively interfere with the growth potential of the economy. It turns out that while public expenditures – especially those responding to market failures – tend to be favorable to growth, most taxes are growth-hindering. The final part of the chapter singles out some pitfalls in the empirical investigation of this relationship. The conjecture is that the nonlinear and possibly endogenous nature of the hypothesized nexus can explain the lack of consensus in empirical studies conducted so far.

The economic effects of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka are multifarious. A discussion of the economic effects of ethnic conflict could encompass the opportunity cost of the war (i.e., the foregone income due to the war at micro- and macro-levels), the economic impact of the military expenditures (on both sides of the war), financing mechanisms (both national and international) of the rebel movement, and the impact of economic sanctions on rebel territory. It should be noted that the economic effects of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is a relatively under-researched area (Arunatilake, Jayasuriya, & Kelegama, 2000; Goonetileke, 1998; Grobar & Gnanaselvam, 1993; Gunatilleke et al., 2001; Kelegama, 1999; O’Sullivan, 1994, 1997, 2001; Rankaduwa & Cooray, 1999; Ravano, 2001; Richardson & de Samarasinghe, 1991; Ross & Samaranayake, 1986; Seabright, 1986).