Results

CentrePiece article

Working from home in the public sector

Study finds workers work faster when they work from home...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Leaders in social movements: evidence from unions in Myanmar

Social movements are catalysts for crucial institutional changes. To succeed, they must coordinate members' views (consensus building) and actions (mobilization). We study union leaders within Myanmar's burgeoning labor ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

The US-China trade war creates jobs (elsewhere)

We examine the indirect effects of the 2018-2019 US-China trade war on Brazil?s labor market. We construct a measure of regional exposure to the trade conflict using industry-specific tariff changes and the sectoral empl...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Train to opportunity: the effect of infrastructure on intergenerational mobility

Can transport infrastructure expand long-term labour opportunities and weaken the occupational link between parents and children? We estimate the causal effect of railway access on occupational attainment and intergenera...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Growth insured: export credit insurance and trade

We estimate the causal effect of short-term export credit insurance (ECI) on firm-level exports using administrative data from China?s export credit agency merged with customs and tax records. Exploiting quasi-random var...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Everything you thought you knew about local markets is wrong

In retail markets, competition among firms happens "locally". But what is the right way to define the local geographic market? Using a natural experiment involving petrol stations on Greek islands and in Athens, Christos...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Exchange-rate pass-through and invoicing currency choice in international production networks

We study exchange-rate pass-through and currency choice in international transactions, focusing on bilateral bargaining power in relationships between domestic buyers and foreign suppliers. Using detailed transaction-lev...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Restructuring a police force

This paper studies how consolidating organisational boundaries affects public service outcomes when resources do not adjust. We examine the Metropolitan Police Service's 2017-2018 reform that merged 32 Borough Operationa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gangs of London and public housing

Novel spatial data on London street gangs between 1990 and 2015 are combined with local housing characteristics to produce a newly constructed data source that shows how social housing and its architectural design relate...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Personnel policy in public sector organizations: evidence from England's academy schools

Many governments are increasingly decentralizing the governance of public sector organizations, by granting more autonomy to their managers. At the same time, public sector managers often cannot use key personnel practic...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Manipulation and selection in unemployment insurance

In this paper, we study the selection patterns of individuals who manage to have their lay-off delayed around an age at lay-off threshold entitling them to four additional months of unemployment insurance, that is, manip...Read more...

Journal article

Canadian Journal of Economics:

Evaluating the impact of export finance support on firm-level export performance: evidence from Pakistan

This paper evaluates the impact of two large export finance support schemes on firm-level export performance. The Export Finance Scheme (EFS) and the Long-Term Finance Facility for Plant & Machinery (LTFF) provide loans ...Read more...

Blog

What works centre for local economic growth:

Multiplying the benefits of Local Growth Plans

Last month the government published new guidance for Mayoral Strategic Authorities on Local Growth Plans. These are a key foundation of the new Industrial Strategy and the government's ambitions for devolution, as well a...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The battle for trade currency dominance: The dollar vs the renminbi in Argentina

The US dollar has traditionally dominated the invoicing of international trade. But could other currencies one day replace it? This column examines a unique policy experiment in Argentina in 2023. Amid a severe dollar sh...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Public sector relocation: lessons from the BBC?s move to Salford

Moving public agencies out of London was a major plank of the levelling-up agenda. Max Nathan, Henry Overman, Capucine Riom and Maria Sanchez-Vidal show how the BBC?s move to Salford had a positive effect on the local ec...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Why people like living in cities: a new measure of the quality of life

People like to live in certain places, even when higher wages are on offer elsewhere. Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel show that once people?s preferences are considered, big cities offer a hi...Read more...

Blog

Centre for Cities:

A review of the Green Book review

While correctly rejecting criticisms that existing guidance is biased, the latest Green Book review suggests changes that should improve appraisal and decision making....Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Rethinking public investment in Greater Manchester's regeneration

Manchester United's proposed new stadium comes with a hefty price tag, and uncertainty over who will pay for it. Aadya Bahl argues that public funding for such projects might compete with Greater Manchester's broader eco...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The US-China trade war creates jobs (elsewhere)

We examine the indirect effects of the US-China trade war on Brazil's labor market. Using industry-specific tariff changes and the sectoral employment distribution across local labor markets, we construct a measure of re...Read more...

Blog

Bruegel:

Pitfalls to avoid as the EU ramps up defence investment

The European Union's push to rearm in the face of growing external threats and the increasing disengagement of the United States has, so far, been primarily a push to spend more on defence and to find ways to facilitate ...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Judge dread: Court severity, repossession risk and demand in mortgage and housing markets

We study the impact of borrower protection on mortgage and housing demand using variation in the likelihood that houses are repossessed coming from heterogeneity in preferences of local judges. We develop a framework tha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Human capital from childhood exposure to homeownership: evidence from Right-to-Buy

"Right to Buy" (RTB) was a large-scale UK housing policy whereby incumbent tenants in public housing could buy their properties at heavily subsidised prices. The policy increased the national homeownership rate by over 1...Read more...

Blog

Imperial College Business School:

What's holding back the green transition?

New research from Imperial College Business School reveals what's stopping businesses from taking action to protect our overheated planet....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Easterlin paradox at 50

We use Gallup World Poll data from over 150 countries from 2009-2019 at both the individual and country levels to revisit the relationship between income and subjective wellbeing. Our inspiration is the paradox first pro...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Budgeting for evaluation

In the budget last week, the government set out increased funding for public services and investment. The gamble is that increased public spending can successfully spur the growth needed to pay for it down the line. Impa...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

UK higher education finance: what's the problem and what can be done?

The tripling of tuition fees in 2012 put universities in a strong financial position. But since then, fees - and the maintenance loans that support students - haven't kept up with inflation. Now, students face real hards...Read more...

CentrePiece article

in brief... Designing carbon markets that deliver change

Ever since the European Union created its market-based carbon policy, governments and businesses have been keen to assess its impact. Jonathan Colmer, Ralf Martin, Mirabelle Muuls and Ulrich Wagner explain why analysing ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Spending public money to create happier lives

Choosing policies that most improve wellbeing would radically change government priorities. David Frayman, Christian Krekel, Richard Layard, Sara MacLennan and Isaac Parkes explain the science behind the new approach....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multipliers from a major public sector relocation: the BBC moves to Salford

This paper considers the impact of a major public sector relocation: the British Broadcasting Corporation's partial move from London to Salford, Greater Manchester starting in 2011. We identify effects of the move, using...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics:

International friends and enemies

We examine whether, as countries become more economically dependent on a trade partner, they realign politically toward that trade partner. We use network measures of economic exposure to foreign productivity growth deri...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Not incentivized yet efficient: working from home in the public sector

This paper studies whether working from home (WFH) affects workers' performance in public sector jobs. Studying public sector initiatives allows us to establish baseline estimates on the impact of WFH net of incentives. ...Read more...

Blog

POIDcast :

Financing innovation

In this episode, our guest is Sabrina Howell who is a Professor of Finance at the NYU Stern. We talk about how to finance innovations, fintechs, venture capitalists, private and public equity, and the role of government!...Read more...

CEP report

Value for money: How to improve wellbeing and reduce misery

The government spends billions on our behalf. How do we want this money to be spent? This report reviews a range of policies and asks the fundamental question which should be asked of every policy: Does it deliver value ...Read more...

Journal article

Research in Transportation Economics:

Housing prices, buses and trams in Medellin (Colombia)

This paper aims to establish the impact of two medium-capacity transportation systems (MCTS) on housing prices in Medellin (Colombia): Metroplus, a bus rapid transit (BRT) system, and Tranvia, a tramway system. Using rep...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Evaluating the impact of export finance support on firm-level export performance: evidence from Pakistan

This paper evaluates the impact of two large export finance support schemes on firm-level export performance. The Export Finance Scheme (EFS) and the Long-Term Finance Facility for Plant & Machinery (LTFF), provide loans...Read more...

Blog

Imperial College Business School:

Do carbon markets work?

Ever since the EU created its market-based carbon policy, governments and businesses have been keen to see an impact. But analysing how effective policies can be on a noisy economic and global stage is complex - and hard...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Using evidence for making sense of policy debates in this election

The UK's general election campaign is now in full swing, with the policy announcements, promises, claims and counterclaims that come with it. Very soon we will see the publication of manifestos, and with them some idea o...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Taking back control? Quasi-experimental evidence on the impact of retirement on locus of control

We use Australian panel data to examine the impact of retirement on individual locus of control, a socio-emotional skill with substantial explanatory power for a broad range of life outcomes. Exploiting the eligibility a...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics:

Measuring absolute income mobility: lessons from North America and Europe

We use linked parent-child administrative data for five countries in North America and Europe, as well as detailed survey data for two more, to investigate methodological challenges in the estimation of absolute income m...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Immigration, female labour supply and local cultural norms

We study the local evolution of female labour supply and cultural norms in West Germany in reaction to the sudden presence of East Germans who migrated to the West after reunification. These migrants grew up with high ra...Read more...

Journal article

Annals of Economics and Statistics:

Proximity of firms to scientific production

Following Bergeaud et al. (2022), we construct a new measure of proximity between industrial sectors and public research laboratories. Using this measure, we explore the underlying network of knowledge linkages between s...Read more...

Journal article

LSE Public Policy Review:

Spatial labour market inequality and social protection in the UK

Spatial inequality in economic outcomes is increasingly seen as a problem for national economies. This paper considers spatial inequality in the UK labour market, its causes, and potential policy solutions. Relative to o...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Making sense of services

Will Brett-Harding outlines a two-step approach for thinking about what high growth potential services look like at the local level....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Claudia Goldin: the economics of women and the labour market

The study of gender was far from mainstream in economics when Claudia Goldin began her research on women and work in the 1980s. Barbara Petrongolo discusses the impact of the 2023 economics Nobel laureate in shaping toda...Read more...

External report

The state of the UK economy 2024

The state of the UK economy is always an important matter, but it is all the more so in what looks likely to be an election year. This UK in a Changing Europe report takes stock of the UK economy in order to assess how i...Read more...

Journal article

PLoS ONE :

Access to digital finance: Equity crowdfunding across countries and platforms

Financing entrepreneurship spurs innovation and economic growth. Digital financial platforms that crowdfund equity for entrepreneurs have emerged globally, yet they remain poorly understood. We model equity crowdfunding ...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Fair employment policies: thinking through local impacts

Will Brett-Harding explains why we should assess the local economic impacts of fair employment policies and why it is important to think carefully about the economic logic and the evidence before pursuing them as a polic...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Proximity of firms to scientific production

Following Bergeaud et al. (2022), we construct a new measure of proximity between industrial sectors and public research laboratories. Using this measure, we explore the underlying network of knowledge linkages between s...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Blog series: Understanding core economic concepts in economic growth

This blog series, aimed primarily at those working in local and central government, provides deep-dives into various components of economic growth, and some key concepts that affect the impact of economic growth policies...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Does homeownership reduce crime? A radical housing reform from the UK

"Right to Buy" (RTB), a large-scale natural experiment whereby incumbent tenants in public housing could buy properties at heavily-subsidised prices, increased the UK homeownership rate by over 10 percentage points betwe...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Public sector relocation: how to think about local impacts

Will Brett-Harding investigates the effects of public sector relocation on local areas that are destinations for the relocated or new public sector activity....Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

What are spatial disparities?

Henry Overman explains what spatial disparities are, why we need to consider them when thinking about local economic growth policies and whether we should try to reduce them....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spatial wage inequality in North America and Western Europe: changes between and within local labour markets 1975-2019

The rise of economic inequalities in advanced economies has been often linked with the growth of spatial inequalities within countries, yet there is limited comparative research that studies the relationship between nati...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Public disclosure and tax compliance: evidence from Uganda

Public disclosure policies have potential to raise tax compliance where alternative enforcement capacity is limited. We study the effects of reporting delinquents and recognizing compliers and provide evidence on the soc...Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Public spaces: key points to keep in mind

Anamaria Tibocha-Nino discusses the local economic benefits and costs of possible schemes regarding the public realm and green spaces....Read more...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Stepping up evaluation of active travel

Will Brett Harding discusses increasing active travel and what this means for locally delivered projects, and more generally about plans for determining the benefits of active travel investments....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Local and national concentration trends in jobs and sales: the role of structural transformation

National U.S. industrial concentration rose between 1992-2017. Simultaneously, the Herfindhahl Index of local (six-digit-NAICS by county) employment concentration fell. This divergence between national and local employme...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The spillover effect of services offshoring on local labour markets

I provide new empirical evidence on the direct and indirect impact of services off-shoring on local employment and wages, using a unique dataset on firms in the UK for the period 2000-2015. Exploiting variation in firms'...Read more...

Journal article

European Journal of Political Economy:

Voting under threat: evidence from the 2020 French local elections

We study how COVID-related risk affected participation across the French territory in the March 2020 local elections. We document that participation went down disproportionately in towns exposed to higher COVID-19 risk. ...Read more...

Chapter

Housing policy and affordable housing

in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance

Lack of affordable housing is a growing and often primary policy concern in cities throughout the world. The main underlying cause for the "affordability crisis," which has been mounting for decades, is a combination of ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The impact of school closures on educational inequality

Nearly all schools closed at some point during the Covid-19 pandemic. Reviewing the international evidence to date on the impact of these closures, Jo Blanden, Matthias Doepke and Jan Stuhler warn that they will substant...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Policies for affordable housing: options and obstacles

The crisis of housing affordability has been mounting for decades, driven by growing demand for properties in desirable areas where supply is limited. Numerous policies have been enacted across countries, but many are in...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Knowledge flows from public labs to private firms

How knowledge spillovers operate between academia and private firms remains an open question. Antonin Bergeaud, Arthur Guillouzouic, Emeric Henry and Clement Malgouyres find strong spillovers through the contracting, mob...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Charity in the time of austerity: in search of the 'Big Society'

The years after the election of the UK's coalition government in 2010 saw a decline in central funding to local government and a fall in expenditure on a range of local services, including social services. These cuts wer...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics :

Ask a local: improving the public pricing of land titles in urban Tanzania

Information on willingness-to-pay is key for public pricing and allocation of services but not easily collected. Studying land titles in Dar-es-Salaam, we ask whether local leaders know and will reveal plot owners' willi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The impact of public transportation and commuting on urban labour markets: evidence from the new survey of London life and labour, 1929-32

This paper examines the consequences of the commuter transport revolution on working-class labour markets in London, circa 1930. Using GIS-based data constructed from the New Survey of London Life and Labour, we examine ...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Geography:

Creative clusters and creative multipliers: evidence from UK cities

Economic geographers have paid much attention to the cultural and creative industries, both for their propensity to cluster in urban settings, and their potential to drive urban economic development. However, evidence on...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

What lies behind Sri Lanka's collapse?

Corruption, the preferential treatment of connections, dependence on debt finance, and explosive borrowing from China have combined to push Sri Lanka into economic collapse. Political instability has only prolonged the c...Read more...

Journal article

Nature Communications:

The effect of Covid certificates on vaccine uptake, health outcomes, and the economy

In the COVID-19 pandemic many countries required COVID certificates, proving vaccination, recovery, or a recent negative test, to access public and private venues. We estimate their effect on vaccine uptake for France, G...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Housing policy and affordable housing

Lack of affordable housing is a growing and often primary policy concern in cities around the world. The main underlying cause for the 'affordability crisis', which has been mounting for decades, is a combination of stro...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Education inequality

This paper provides new evidence on educational inequality and reviews the literature on the causes and consequences of unequal education. We document large achievement gaps between children from different socio-economic...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Ask a local: improving the public pricing of land titles in urban Tanzania

Information on willingness-to-pay is key for public pricing and allocation of services but not easily collected. Studying land titles in Dar-es-Salaam, we ask whether local leaders know and will reveal plot owners' willi...Read more...

CEP Insights

Jobs and wages

Most working-age adults depend on earnings from jobs as their main source of income. Understanding the labour market has always been a central part of research at CEP and its predecessor the Centre for Labour Economics....Read more...

Book

Restarting the future
How to fix the intangible economy

The past two decades have witnessed sluggish economic growth, mounting inequality, dysfunctional competition, and a host of other ills that have left people wondering what has happened to the future they were promised. R...Read more...

CEP Insights

Wellbeing

As societies become richer, they do not become happier. This paradox has led to a growing interest in the science of wellbeing, and how policymakers can evaluate policies in terms of what will improve wellbeing. Economis...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

JUE insight: How much does Covid-19 increase with mobility? Evidence from New York and four other US cities

How effective are restrictions on mobility in limiting COVID-19 spread? Using zip code data across five U.S. cities, we estimate that total cases per capita decrease by 19% for every ten percentage point fall in mobility...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Learning from praise: evidence from a field experiment with teachers

Financial incentive programs for teachers are increasingly common, but little is known about the effectiveness of non-monetary incentives in improving educational outcomes. This field experiment measures how repeated pub...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... UK gender pay gap reporting: a crude but effective policy

Forcing employers to reveal their gender pay gap has been effective in its main goal of narrowing the gap, according to research by Jack Blundell who finds the difference between women and men's pay has shrunk by just un...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

Covid and voting: how turnout in the 2020 French local elections fell

How did the pandemic affect turnout in French elections in March 2020? Elsa Leromain (LSE) and Gonzague Vannoorenberghe (Universite Catholique de Louvain) find that participation fell, especially in towns more exposed to...Read more...

Journal article

Small Business Economics:

Soft and hard information in equity crowdfunding: network effects in the digitalization of entrepreneurial finance

As a digital financial innovation, equity crowdfunding (ECF) allows investors to exploit the complementarity of information provision and network effects in a reduced transaction cost environment. We build on the underly...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Voting under threat: evidence from the 2020 French local elections

We study how Covid-related risk affected participation across the French territory in the March 2020 local elections. We document that participation went down disproportionately in towns exposed to higher Covid-19 risk. ...Read more...

Blog

What Works Wellbeing:

Book launch - a handbook for wellbeing policy-making

Christian Krekel gives an overview of his new book, co-authored with Paul Frijters, about the realities of policy-making and how wellbeing measures can improve what the public sector does....Read more...

Journal article

European Economic Review:

Financial system architecture and the patterns of international trade

Countries differ in the extent to which their financial systems rely on banks or on financial markets. We offer a model featuring a complex relationship between countries? financial system architecture and their comparat...Read more...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

Management practices and public policy: an overview

This paper introduces and summarizes this issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, on management practices. We outline key concepts in the empirical study of structured management practices, then summarize each of ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Local economic conditions and the nature of new housing supply

We explore the effects of local economic conditions on the type and size of newly constructed housing units in a city. Exploiting the 1984?2004 metro area samples of the American Housing Survey and US Census building per...Read more...

Journal article

The Lancet Public Health :

Policy stringency and mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic: a longitudinal analysis of data from 15 countries

To date, public health policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic have been evaluated on the basis of their ability to reduce transmission and minimise economic harm. We aimed to assess the association between COV...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Wage responses to gender pay gap reporting requirements

In this paper I study a policy in which employers are required to publicly report gender pay gap statistics. Proponents argue that increasing the information available to workers and consumers places pressure on firms to...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The impact of public employment: evidence from Bonn

This paper evaluates the impact of changes in public employment on private sector activity using the creation of the new West German government in Bonn in the wake of the Second World War as a source of exogenous variati...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Build back happier

In CEP?s first anniversary lecture marking 30 years since the Centre began, founder director Richard Layard outlined the science of wellbeing and its implications for public policy. As society tries to recover from the c...Read more...

Blog

Bloomberg Stephanomics Podcasts:

The economic cost of Covid-19's mental health crisis

Richard Layard talks about why the coronavirus should make us rethink how we treat mental illness, how "building back better" should mean services rather than roads and railways, and why money really doesn't make us happ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Colonial legacies: shaping African cities

Institutions persisting from colonial rule affect the spatial structure and conditions under which 100s of millions of people live in Sub-saharan African cities. In a sample of 318 cities, Francophone cities have more co...Read more...

Blog

The State of Working Britain:

Redundancies and the labour market under Covid. Has furlough helped? And other related things you may have missed

Redundancies are often seen as commensurate with unemployment - but not always. In this blog post, Jonathan Wadsworth analyses the links between the UK's furlough scheme and redundancies....Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The impact of public employment: evidence from West Germany's post-war capital Bonn

Raising the level of public employment is a frequently used policy instrument to support economically lagging regions. This column evaluates the impact of changes in public employment on private sector activity using the...Read more...

Blog

CVER Blog:

Stark contrast between pre- and post-16 provision in UTCs

At a time when Prime Minister Boris Johnson has put the governmenta??s skills policy agenda in the spotlight, Guglielmo Ventura presents findings from his research seeking to understand whether UTCs were successful at br...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The social determinants of choice quality: evidence from health insurance in the Netherlands

Market provision of impure public goods such as insurance, retirement savings and education is common and growing as policy makers seek to offer more choice and gain efficiencies. This approach induces an important trade...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Policy:

School choice during a period of radical school reform. Evidence from academy conversion in England

We study how demand responds to the rebranding of existing state schools as autonomous 'academies' in the context of a radical and large-scale reform to the English education system. The academy programme encouraged scho...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Selection into entrepreneurship and self-employment

We study the effects of ability and liquidity constraints on entrepreneurship. We develop a three sector Roy model that differentiates between entrepreneurs and other self-employed to address puzzling gaps that have emer...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and geography

This paper reviews recent research on geography and trade. One of the key empirical findings over the last decade has been the role of geography in shaping the distributional consequences of trade. One of the major theor...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

City of dreams no more: Covid-19 in urban India

COVID-19 has decimated livelihoods in urban India and created a new underclass of workers who are being pushed into poverty. Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Fjolla Kondirolli (LSE) say a national work guarantee is nee...Read more...

Blog

LSE US Centre:

How economists view the US debate on extending jobless benefits

Experts discuss the trade-offs between work incentives and income support; whether top-ups should be reduced, and how economics and public health might determine federal contribution levels, writes Romesh Vaitilingam....Read more...