In this study, we examined the effect of interest rate and liquidity growth on stock market performance in Ghana using monthly data from the Ghana Stock Exchange and Bank of Ghana for the period 2010:12 to 2013:11. After employing robust linear regression (MEstimation), there is a compelling evidence that performance of the Ghanaian stock market is highly influenced by liquidity growth, exchange rate and inflation; and that interest rate effect is insignificant though positive on the stock market index for the period under study.

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The issue of whether government health spending improves health outcomes has been a matter of contention over the years. There have been calls for governments to reduce their financing role in the health sector since such funding do not produce better health. This article examines the effect of public (i.e., government) health expenditure on infant mortality, a proxy of health outcomes, in low- and middle-income countries. We use data from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators database and employ fixed effects estimation technique, with three-stage least squares as a robustness check. The data cover the period 1995–2014. We find that public health expenditure improves health outcomes significantly, as it reduces infant mortality. The results further show that rising income and access to safe water are some of the reasons for improved health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. Based on these results and the expected redistributive impact of government spending, governments in low- and middle-income countries may consider increasing health spending for better healthcare systems and improved health.

Catastrophic healthcare expenditure (CHE) can plunge households into poverty. Faced with CHE, the question that becomes relevant is how long it will take the household to exit CHE. This paper examines the effect of the Ghana National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) on exit time from CHE. The paper uses the Cox proportional hazard model for the analysis, with data sourced from round six of the Ghana Living Standard Survey and World Development Indicators. The results show that households that spend 40% (20%) of their non-food incomes on healthcare, on average, exit CHE after 10 months and 4 days (13 months and 24 days) being in CHE and those with NHIS coverage exit CHE 19 days (30 days) earlier than those without NHIS coverage. Policy implications arising from this paper include the need to expand NHIS enrolment to mitigate impoverishment due to out-of-pocket healthcare payments. Households with higher risks of severe CHE and longer exit time from CHE should be identified and provided with comprehensive NHIS coverage than those with lower risks.

Financing healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is characterized by high levels of out-of-pocket (OOP) payments for healthcare. This renders many individuals vulnerable to poverty and deviates from the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) goal of providing financial protection for healthcare. We examined the relative effects of public and external health spending on OOP healthcare payment in SSA. We used the system generalised method of moments (GMM) estimator and data from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators for 43 SSA countries from 2000 to 2017. The results show reductions in OOP payments are higher with increases in public spending than external spending. This means increases in public health spending, compared to external health spending, will increase the pace towards achieving the financial protection goal of UHC in SSA. But since government spending is limited by fiscal space and parliamentary approval, public health spending through social health insurance might provide a regular means of financing healthcare to speed up achieving the financial protection goal in SSA countries.