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The International Handbook on Ageing and Public Policy explores the challenges arising from the ageing of populations across the globe for government, policy makers, the private sector and civil society. It examines various national state approaches to welfare provisions for older people, and highlights alternatives based around the voluntary and third-party sector, families and private initiatives. The Handbook is highly relevant for academics interested in this critical issue, and offers important messages for policy makers and practitioners.

This comprehensive collection brings together more than 50 contributions from some of the most influential researchers in health economics. It authoritatively covers theoretical and empirical issues in health economics, with a balanced range of material on equity and efficiency in health care systems, health technology assessment and issues of concern for developing countries. This thoroughly revised second edition is expanded to include four new chapters, while all existing chapters have been extensively updated.

In this unique and pathbreaking book, David Reisman examines the relatively new phenomenon of health travel. He presents a multidisciplinary account of the way in which lower costs, shorter waiting times, different services, and the chance to combine recreational tourism with a check-up or an operation all come together to make medical travel a new industry with the potential to create jobs and wealth, while at the same time giving sick people high-quality care at an affordable price.

Around half the world’s population live in countries where the fertility rate is far below the replacement rate and where life expectancy is increasing dramatically. Using Singapore as a case study, Social Policy in an Ageing Society explores what might happen in a dynamic and prosperous society when falling births, longer life expectancy and rising expectations put disproportionate pressure on scarce resources that have alternative uses.

The author begins by examining various economic constructs as aids for achieving a fair and equitable delivery of health care services. He then assesses their level of practical application and evaluates the costs and benefits to society of pursuing the development and use of the ‘New Medicine’. The book ends with a case study of organ and tissue transplantation that illustrates the implementation of distributive justice. The author concludes that as long as clinical medicine maintains its focus on healing and alleviating suffering among patients, a point of equilibrium will be reached that advances the common good.

Health Care and Public Policy is a comprehensive and intelligible cross-disciplinary account of the objectives of health care policy (medical, social, economic) and of the policy-tools that government can employ (cost–benefit analysis, entry barriers, competition) in order to ensure that scarce resources are not wasted nor needy social groups deprived of basic and affordable care.

This book is a major contribution to regulatory theory from three members of the world-class regulatory research group based in Australia. It marks a new development in responsive regulatory theory in which a strengths-based pyramid complements the regulatory pyramid.

How involved should the government be in American healthcare? Ronald Hamowy argues that to answer this pressing question, we must understand the genesis of the five main federal agencies charged with responsibility for our health: the Public Health Service, the Food and Drug Administration, the Veterans Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and Medicare. In examining these, he traces the growth of federal influence from its tentative beginnings in 1798 through the ambitious infrastructures of today – and offers startling insights on the current debate.

The aim of The Elgar Companion to Health Economics is to take an audience of advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers to the frontier of research in health economics, by providing them with short and easily readable introductions to key topics. The volume brings together 50 chapters written by more than 90 leading international contributors. The contributions to the Companion are concise and focus on specific concepts, methods and key evidence.