Reform of the welfare sector is an important yet difficult challenge for all countries in transition from socialist central planning to market-oriented democracies. Here a scholar of the economics of socialism and post-socialist transition and a health economist take on this challenge. This 2001 book offers health sector reform recommendations for ten countries of Eastern Europe, drawn consistently from a set of explicit guiding principles. After discussing sector-specific characteristics, lessons of international experience, and the main set of initial conditions, the authors advocate reforms based on organized public financing for basic care, private financing for supplementary care, pluralistic delivery of services, and managed competition. Policymakers need to achieve a balance, both assuring social solidarity through universal access to basic health services and expanding individual choice and responsibility through voluntary supplemental insurance. The authors also consider the problems that undermine effectiveness of market-based competition in the health sector.

The governments of China and the United States - despite profound differences in history, culture, economic structure, and political ideology - both engage the private sector in the pursuit of public value. This book employs the term collaborative governance to describe relationships where neither the public nor private party is fully in control, arguing that such shared discretion is needed to deliver value to citizens. This concept is exemplified across a wide range of policy arenas, such as constructing high speed rail, hosting the Olympics, building human capital, and managing the healthcare system. This book will help decision-makers apply the principles of collaborative governance to effectively serve the public, and will enable China and the United States to learn from each other's experiences. It will empower public decision-makers to more wisely engage the private sector. The book's overarching conclusion is that transparency is the key to the legitimate growth of collaborative governance.

The governments of China and the United States - despite profound differences in history, culture, economic structure, and political ideology - both engage the private sector in the pursuit of public value. This book employs the term collaborative governance to describe relationships where neither the public nor private party is fully in control, arguing that such shared discretion is needed to deliver value to citizens. This concept is exemplified across a wide range of policy arenas, such as constructing high speed rail, hosting the Olympics, building human capital, and managing the healthcare system. This book will help decision-makers apply the principles of collaborative governance to effectively serve the public, and will enable China and the United States to learn from each other's experiences. It will empower public decision-makers to more wisely engage the private sector. The book's overarching conclusion is that transparency is the key to the legitimate growth of collaborative governance.

Reform of the welfare sector is an important yet difficult challenge for countries in transition from socialist central planning to market-oriented democracies. Here a scholar of the economics of socialism and post-socialist transition, and a health economist take on this challenge. They offer health sector reform recommendations for ten countries of Eastern Europe, drawn from nine guiding principles. The authors conclude that policymakers need to achieve a balance, both assuring social solidarity through universal access to basic health services and expanding individual choice and responsibility through voluntary supplemental insurance.

China's New National Urbanization Plan (2014-20) sets ambitious targets for sustainable, human-centered, and environmentally friendly urbanization. What key institutional and governance challenges will China face in reaching those goals? This title, coedited by a prominent leader of China's National Development and Reform Commission, features policy-focused contributions from leading social scientists in the United States and China who explore challenges ranging from migration and labor markets to agglomeration economies, land finance, affordable housing, and education policy.

The world's two most populous countries face numerous policy challenges from rapid demographic change, including gender imbalance, population aging, and rapid urbanization. Drawing on social science expertise from China, India, and the United States, the contributors examine the social and economic challenges for policy across a range of domains, from family planning and old-age support to human capital investment, poverty alleviation, and broader issues of governance.

How are health systems in Asia promoting evidence based policies for healthy aging? What strategies have been tried to prevent noncommunicable chronic diseases, screen for early detection, raise quality of care, improve medication adherence, reduce unnecessary hospitalizations, and increase "value for money" in health spending?The chapters of this book contribute to the literature on how diverse economies of Asia are preparing for older population age structures and transforming health systems to support patients who will live with chronic disease for decades. Fifteen concise chapters cover multiple aspects of policy initiatives for healthy aging and economic research on diabetes and hypertension control in health systems as diverse as cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong, to large economies such as Japan, India, and China. Topics include precision health and personalized medicine in Japan; China's evolving family doctor system and its national demonstration areas for chronic disease control; cancer disparities and public private roles in Taiwan; and policies for healthy aging in Korea and India. Several chapters draw on research led by the Stanford Asia Health Policy Program on the net value of chronic disease management programs throughout Asia, starting with analysis of detailed longitudinal, patient level data on diabetes management as a lens for understanding the net value of medical spending for patients with complicated chronic diseases across diverse health systems.

Demographic transition, along with the economic and geopolitical re-emergence of Asia, are two of the largest forces shaping the twenty-first century, but little is known about the implications for innovation. The countries of East Asia have some of the oldest age structures on the planet: between now and 2050, the population that is age 65 and older will increase to more than one in four Chinese, and to more than one in three Japanese and Koreans. Other economies with younger populations, like India, face the challenge of fully harnessing the "demographic dividend" from large cohorts in the working ages. This book delves into how such demographic changes shape the supply of innovation and the demand for specific kinds of innovation in the Asia-Pacific. Social scientists from Asia and the United States offer multidisciplinary perspectives from economics, demography, political science, sociology, and public policy; topics range from the macroeconomic effects of population age structure, to the microeconomics of technology and the labor force, to the broader implications for human well-being. Contributors analyze how demography shapes productivity and the labor supply of older workers, as well as explore the aging population as consumers of technologies and drivers of innovations to meet their own needs, as well as the political economy of spatial development, agglomeration economies, urban-rural contrasts, and differential geographies of aging.

In the past fifty years, two factors have led to global population aging: a decline in fertility to levels close to --or even below --replacement and a decline in mortality that has increased world average life expectancy by nearly 67 percent. As the population skews toward fewer young people and more elderly who live longer postretirement lives, demographic changes --labor force participation, savings, economic growth, living arrangements, marriage markets, and social policy --are transforming society in fundamental, irreversible ways. Nowhere are these effects of aging and demographic change more acute --nor their long-term effects more potentially significant --than in the Asia-Pacific region. How will these developments impact the economies and social protection systems of Japan, South Korea, China, and, by extension, the United States?

To assess this question, "Aging Asia" showcases cutting-edge, policy-relevant research. The first section focuses on demographic trends and their economic implications; the second section approaches select topics from a global comparative perspective, including social insurance financing, medical costs, and long-term care.