This paper estimates the determinants of aggregate health care expenditure function for the U.S. by applying a co integration test on a time series data. The evidence presented in the paper supports co integration. The paper lends support to the view that per capita income is the major determinant of aggregate health care expenditure in the U. S. Age of the population, the number of practicing doctors and the share of public finance do not contribute significantly to the explanation of the health care spending. The main policy recommendation that can be drawn from the results is that the health expenditure policy should be coupled not necessarily with the increase in the supply of physicians or policies that promote competition but, with long-run policies that promote human capital. We also find that the mixture of public-private funding does not contribute significantly to the explanation of the health care expenditure in the U.S.

The formation of the BRICS Group was aimed at, among others, developing parallel economic power house of the highly emerging nations and generating additional shock absorbing capacity. Maintaining equitable distribution of income and wealth among the group members, thus, was one of the top most priorities of the group. Under this backdrop, the present study examines whether the countries are converging in income leading to overall development in the group. Applying the neoclassical growth and panel unit roots models on the quarterly data from 2006Q1–2017Q2 to 2009Q1–2017Q2, the study reveals that there is no significant catching up of the countries in both the periods, but there is conditional convergence in the first period. The variables which played conditional roles are net FDI inflow and crude oil production. Further, the study observes sigma convergence among the group members in both the periods, signifying that the cross-country income differences have been going down over time.

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Efficient market theory states that financial markets can process information instantly. Empirical observations have challenged the stricter form of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH). These empirical observations and theoretical considerations show that price changes are difficult to predict if one starts from the time series of price changes. This paper provides an explanation in terms of algorithmic complexity theory of Kolmogorov that makes a clearer connection between the efficient market hypothesis and the unpredictable character of stock returns.

Proper working of forward and backward linkages between the public and private investments in the face of balanced development of an economy is an already established fact in the literature of development economics.The present article is aimed at examining the working of these two linkage effects upon the economies of 24 countries in different economic status: whether public capital is more productive than private capital and finally to test whether public investments crowd-in or crowd-out the private investments for the period 1988-2013. The results show that, for the entire period, forward linkage has worked for Spain, Senegal and Ecuador and backward linkages worked for United States of America, United Kingdom, Thailand, South Africa, Nigeria, Cambodia, Rwanda and Paraguay. Both forward and backward linkages have happened for Ireland, China, India, Brazil and Peru. For the second objective, the numbers of instances of the income-generative capacities of both types of investments are a few in Review of Market Integration 10(1) 45-75