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"Interest in world history has never been greater—both among historians and the reading public. Globalization has coaxed historians out of their fixation on all things national, which has characterized historical research since the nineteenth century. But with this new global field of research has come new methodological problems. It is high time that these problems were tackled, if only to develop methods to ensure that world-historical research strives for the same high quality and standards as any other field of historical study. This book addresses all these problems in detail, with a particular emphasis on solutions. The contributors discuss how the progress made in the sciences, which offer unique access to new types of source material, can best be used by the historians of global processes. These are sources that demand an awareness of both their advantages and their drawbacks. The same is true of the secondary sources, which are the basis of most world-historical overviews and syntheses. Primary and secondary sources alike require shrewd handling in a way not seen before. Similarly, the calculations and comparisons essential to world history must be harmonized, and historians have to acknowledge that the information they are working from is often of variable quality and detail. Linguistic and cultural differences must also be analysed systematically whenever historians seek the recurring traits in human history, much as they must be alert to the strong ideological interests that all too often distort scholarly results.Solutions to these and the other methodological problems are hammered out in this book. Whether researchers, students, or interested readers, anyone keen to sharpen their critical thinking about world history will find there is much to take away from this book. Intresset för världshistoria är större än på länge – både bland den läsande allmänheten och bland historiker. Globaliseringen har bidragit till att historikerna kommit ut ur den fixering vid det nationella som kännetecknat deras forskning ända sedan 1800-­‐talet. Men med den nya globala arenan för forskning följer också nya metodproblem. Det är hög tid att de världshistoriskt orienterade forskarna tar sig an de här problemen och utvecklar metoder, så att de kan arbeta med lika höga kvalitetskrav som annan historieforskning. I den här boken adresseras utförligt en serie sådana problem, och författarna ger förslag på hur de ska lösas. Här diskuteras hur den naturvetenskapliga forskningens framsteg kan utnyttjas för den som vill studera övergripande globala processer med vår tids unikt stora tillgång till helt nya typer av källmaterial. Det kräver en medvetenhet hos historikerna både om de här källornas förtjänster och om deras fällor. Detsamma gäller användningen sekundärlitteratur, som en stor del av de världshistoriska översikterna och synteserna baseras på. Här krävs källkritisk skärpa av ett nytt slag. Här krävs också att de ekonomiska och andra beräkningar och jämförelser som måste till inom världshistorisk forskning harmonieras och att forskarna tar höjd för att den information de bygger på ofta är av olika kvalitet och upplösning. Språkliga och kulturella skillnader måste också analyseras systematiskt när forskarna söker de återkommande dragen i den mänskliga historien. Dessutom måste världshistorikerna ständigt vara uppmärksamma på de starka ideologiska intressen som allt för ofta tenderar att förvrida de vetenskapliga resultaten.Detta och en hel del andra metodproblem diskuteras i den här boken, där det finns mycket att hämta både för forskaren och för studenten, liksom för den historieintresserade läsare som vill skärpa sitt kritiska förhållningssätt till världshistorisk forskning."

World history. --- History --- HISTORY --- Methodology. --- World. --- Universal history --- archaeological data resolution --- law comparison --- climate history --- agricultural history --- source criticism --- economics/international comparisons --- China --- Common Era --- Sweden --- Tea

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World Bank's international poverty line of USD 1.90/day, at 2011 purchasing power parity, is based on a collection of national poverty lines, which were originally used to set the international poverty line of USD 1.25/day at 2005 purchasing power parity. This paper proposes an approach for estimating a more recent, complete, and comparable collection of national poverty thresholds from reported national poverty rates. The paper presents a set of international poverty lines based on this new atabase of national poverty lines. In contrast to the lines used to estimate the USD 1.90 international poverty line, this approach produces national poverty lines that are (1) consistent with national poverty rates, (2) expressed in common units, and (3) provide greater support to the estimated international poverty line. These national poverty lines are used to estimate an extreme international poverty line, and three higher lines that are more relevant for higher-income countries. A key finding provides evidence of the robustness and relevance of the USD 1.90 international poverty line as a measure of extreme poverty for low-income countries.

Adult-Equivalence. --- Global Poverty. --- International Comparisons. --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth. --- Poverty Lines. --- Poverty Reduction. --- Pro-Poor Growth. --- Rural Poverty Reduction. --- Services and Transfers to Poor.

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"The book is the first to grow out of the work of the International Social Justice Project (ISJP), a collaborative study of public opinion about social justice. Though conceived in the year prior to the revolutions that swept central and eastern Europe in 1989, the ISJP did not put its survey into the field until the summer of 1991, in a new climate of open international exchange in social research. Employing common methods of data collection and, within the limits of translation, identical survey instruments, the ISJP investigated public opinion in seven newly emerging post-Communist countries (including the then Czechoslovakia) and five of the world's most influential capitalist democracies, with special sensitivity to divergencies in the newly united Germany." "Among the themes addressed by the volume's contributors are: the views and beliefs of citizens in the post-Communist states on the transition to market economies and parliamentary democracy; the role of ideology in legitimating inequality; the structural determination of beliefs about justice; the processes that shape individual level evaluations; and the major implications of the ISJP findings."--Jacket.

Social justice --- Post-communism. --- Postcommunism --- World politics --- Communism --- Equality --- Justice --- Public opinion. --- Post-communism --- #SBIB:17H20 --- 316.653 --- 316.653 Openbare mening. Publieke opinie --- Openbare mening. Publieke opinie --- Public opinion --- Sociale wijsbegeerte: algemeen --- Political change --- Attitudes --- Political systems --- Welfare state --- Income distribution --- Surveys --- International comparisons --- Overseas item

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Social health insurance (SHI) is enjoying something of a revival in parts of the developing world. Many countries that have in the past relied largely on tax finance (and out-of-pocket payments) have introduced SHI, or are thinking about doing so. And countries with SHI already in place are making vigorous efforts to extend coverage to the informal sector. Ironically, this revival is occurring at a time when the traditional SHI countries in Europe have either already reduced payroll financing in favor of general revenues, or are in the process of doing so. This paper examines how SHI fares in health care delivery, revenue collection, covering the formal sector, and its impacts on the labor market. It argues that SHI does not necessarily deliver good quality care at a low cost, partly because of poor regulation of SHI purchasers. It suggests that the costs of collecting revenues can be substantial, even in the formal sector where nonenrollment and evasion are commonplace, and that while SHI can cover the formal sector and the poor relatively easily, it fares badly in terms of covering the nonpoor informal sector workers until the economy has reached a high level of economic development. The paper also argues that SHI can have negative labor market effects.

Breast Cancer --- Families --- Financing --- Health --- Health Care --- Health Care Delivery --- Health Insurance --- Health Monitoring and Evaluation --- Health Policy --- Health Services --- Health Systems Development and Reform --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Hospitals --- International Comparisons --- Life Expectancy --- Patients --- Prevention --- Primary Health Care --- Risks --- Screening --- Strategy --- Unemployment --- Workers

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Government spending in developing countries typically account for between 15 and 30 percent of GDP. Hence, small changes in the efficiency of public spending could have a major impact on GDP and on the attainment of the government ' s objectives. The first challenge that stakeholders face is measuring efficiency. This paper attempts such quantification and has two major parts. The first part estimates efficiency as the distance between observed input-output combinations and an efficiency frontier (defined as the maximum attainable output for a given level of inputs). This frontier is estimated for several health and education output indicators by means of the Free Disposable Hull (FDH) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) techniques. Both input-inefficiency (excess input consumption to achieve a level of output) and output-inefficiency (output shortfall for a given level of inputs) are scored in a sample of 140 countries using data from 1996 to 2002. The second part of the paper seeks to verify empirical regularities of the cross-country variation in efficiency. Results show that countries with higher expenditure levels register lower efficiency scores, as well as countries where the wage bill is a larger share of the government ' s budget. Similarly, countries with higher ratios of public to private financing of the service provision score lower efficiency, as do countries plagued by the HIV/AIDS epidemic and those with higher income inequality. Countries with higher aid-dependency ratios also tend to score lower in efficiency, probably due to the volatility of this type of funding that impedes medium term planning and budgeting. Though no causality may be inferred from this exercise, it points at different factors to understand why some countries might need more resources than others to achieve similar educational and health outcomes.

Children --- Decision Making --- Diphtheria --- Environment --- Environmental Economics and Policies --- Health --- Health Care --- Health Care Professionals --- Health Indicators --- Health Monitoring and Evaluation --- Health Outcomes --- Health Services --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Hospitals --- Immunization --- Implementation --- International Comparisons --- Knowledge --- Life Expectancy --- Lifestyle --- Measurement --- Mortality --- Observation --- Patient