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Because the empirical literature on the causes of corruption has focused primarily on the demand side of corruption, that is, the corrupt officials who receive bribe payments, the role of the private sector as the supply side of corruption has not been examined thoroughly in this literature. In this article, it is argued that corporate governance is among the important factors determining the level of corruption. Using a cross‐country data set, hypotheses  that  explicitly  link  various  measures  of  corporate  governance to the level of corruption are tested. The results show that corporate governance standards can have profound impacts on the effectiveness of the global anticorruption campaign.

Despite rapid economic growth and assiduous efforts in anti-corruption campaigns, many Asian economies continue to be plagued with rampant corruption problems; and in a number of countries, the progress towards corruption reduction has stagnated over the last decade as measured by corruption perception indices. This paper focuses on the corporate sector as the main source of corruption problems in Asia, with particular emphasis on the impact that firm accounting practices have on the level of bribery. Using a unique cross-country firm-level dataset, we examine some distinct characteristics of bribery in corporate Asia, and empirically test the relationship between firm accounting practices and bribery. Our findings suggest that better accounting practices can help reduce both the incidence of bribery activities and the amount of bribe payments, but conforming to high quality accounting standard alone will not necessarily enhance the quality of accounting practices and thus will not automatically bring down the level of bribery.

AbstractHealth insurance reform for rural China is at a crossroads. The achievements of recent reform initiatives appear remarkable as measured by coverage through the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS); yet there is little evidence that NCMS has made major strides toward improving the financial protection of health care for the rural population. Our assessment suggests that the system may become trapped in a vicious cycle of increases in government subsidies and resulting cost escalations in health care due to strategic responses among health care providers, a factor that hitherto has been largely overlooked. We argue that to improve the sector's overall performance, a thorough reform is needed to change provider payment incentives. Attention should also be directed to strengthening the ability of government agencies to manage health insurance funds effectively through their roles as purchasers and third‐party payers.

Recent research on policy-making under uncertainty in the water sector has contributed to our understanding of types and sources of uncertainty as well as to the development of tools and approaches to manage uncertainty. This paper reviews the literature and identifies several strands of systematic bias, notably an emphasis on natural sources of uncertainty over human sources; a tendency to treat sources of uncertainty as independent and a corresponding neglect of interaction between sources; and a focus on tools to reduce or contain uncertainty rather than to accommodate it. The papers in this issue contribute to overcoming these biases.

Health insurance reform for rural China is at a crossroads. The achievements of recent reform initiatives appear remarkable as measured by coverage through the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS). Yet there is little evidence that NCMS has made major strides toward reducing the financial risks of health care for the rural population. We argue that to improve the overall performance of the NCMS, more attention should be directed to improve insurance benefit package, strengthen the roles of government agencies as purchasers and third-party payers, reforming provider payment methods, as well as to establish a fiscal redistribution mechanism to reduce inequities in health financing arising from different regions of the country. Our critical assessment also points to the danger that this system may be trapped in a vicious cycle of increases in government subsidies and resulting cost escalations in health care due to strategic responses among health care providers, a factor that hitherto has been largely overlooked.

China's New Co-operative Medical Scheme (NCMS), a government-subsidized health insurance programme, was launched in 2003 in response to deterioration in access to health services in rural areas. Initially designed to cover inpatient care, it has begun to expand its benefit package to cover outpatient care since 2007. The impacts of this initiative on outpatient care costs have raised growing concern, in particular regarding whether it has in fact reduced out-of-pocket (OOP) payments for services among rural participants. This study investigates the impacts on outpatient costs by analysing data from an individual-level longitudinal survey, the China Health and Nutrition Survey, for 2004 and 2009, years shortly before and after NCMS began coverage of outpatient services in 2007. Various health econometrics strategies were employed in the analysis of these data, including the Two-Part Model, the Heckman Selection Model and Propensity Score Matching with the Differences-in-Differences model, to estimate the effects of the 2007 NCMS initiative on per episode outpatient costs. We find that NCMS outpatient coverage starting in 2007 had little impact on reducing its participants' OOP payments for outpatient services. The new coverage may also have contributed to an observed increase in total per episode outpatient costs billed to the insured patients. This increase was more pronounced among village clinics and township health centres—the backbone of the health system for rural residents—than at county and municipal hospitals.

Proper roles for government and market in addressing policy problems may be assessed by considering the duality between market imperfections and government imperfections. The potential of government interventions or market mechanisms as core policy instruments can be eroded by fundamental deficiencies deeply rooted in either government or market as social institutions. The impacts of such deficiencies are much more extensive than postulated by the existing theories. Analysis here, based on policy innovations in land transport and health care in Singapore, suggests how policy mixes might become the norm of response for addressing policy problems found in a range of sectors. The analytical framework presented may help to distinguish among different policy mixes according to their effectiveness, but also provides some useful guiding principles for policy design. Adapted from the source document.

Despite the growing need for private sector participation (PSP) in the water sector, private sector investments in the water sector have experienced a downturn in recent years, especially concession projects, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of all PSP projects in urban water utilities from 1990 to 2005. This paper traces the concession to its origin—the French model—and focuses on the challenges of transferring the model into the context of developing countries, by comparing two cases of concession projects in Jakarta and Manila. This comparative analysis suggests that although the French model appears a compelling choice because of its promise of attracting capital investments and improving efficiency, successful applications of the model may require substantial modifications to its original form in order to adapt to prevailing legal and social norms as well as to local governance capacity.

ABSTRACTMarket‐oriented reforms in the health sector continue to dominate health policy agendas in many developing countries despite growing evidence of their negative impacts. This article critically examines eight key arguments that are used to justify market‐oriented reforms and that continue to hold widespread appeal among policy makers and analysts. The authors conclude that although the axiom that health care is atypical due to pervasive market failures is widely acknowledged by reformers, the scope and depth of the negative consequences of market competition and private sector involvement are systematically underestimated in policy design and implementation, while the regulatory capacity to overcome them is overestimated. Their analysis suggests that while there is considerable scope for market‐oriented reforms, the success of such reforms depends on a tight set of conditions that are often absent in the health care sector, especially but not exclusively in developing countries.

The decline in popularity of New Public Management worldwide reinvigorated the search for a new paradigm in the field of public administration. Several alternatives to New Public Management, such as the New Governance and Public Value paradigms, have gained prominence in recent years. Despite tensions among these paradigms, exceptional challenges for public administration teaching programs exist. Xun Wu and Jingwei He of the National University of Singapore compiled data on public administration and management courses from 48 top master of public administration degree programs in China and the United States. This essay analyzes how competing paradigms influenced the selection of course content and pedagogical foci in professional training curricula. The authors conclude that in order to take advantage of an unprecedented opportunity provided by the rapid, global expansion of professional education in public administration, there is an urgent need to find a synthesized theoretical framework.