Studies of health have recognized the influence of socioeconomic position on health outcomes. People with higher socioeconomic ranking, in general, tend to be healthier than those with lower socioeconomic rankings. The effect of political environment on population health has not been adequately researched, however. This study investigates the effect of democracy (or lack thereof) along with socioeconomic factors on population health. It is maintained that democracy may have an impact on health independent of the effects of socioeconomic factors. Such impact is considered as the direct effect of democracy on health. Democracy may also affect population health indirectly by affecting socioeconomic position. To investigate these theoretical links, some broad measures of population health (e.g., mortality rates and life expectancies) are empirically examined across a spectrum of countries categorized as autocratic, incoherent, and democratic polities. The regression findings support the positive influence of democracy on population health. Incoherent polities, however, do not seem to have any significant health advantage over autocratic polities as the reference category. More rigorous tests of the links between democracy and health should await data from multi-country population health surveys that include specific measures of mental and physical morbidity.

The idea that financial structure and output determination may be interrelated has gone through several cycles over the past half a century since its inception at the time of the Great Depression. In its latest reincarnation as the theory of financial acceleration, it considers financial factors as propagation mechanisms for the disturbances originating in the real economy. The agency costs of credit allocation by the financial intermediaries play a central role in this theory. Financial factors have rarely been studied as potential sources of variation in the economy. This article, however, investigates the origination of disturbances from bank credit and allows for the propagation of disturbances within a relatively simple macro-dynamic system that utilizes the Structural Vector Autoregression approach The findings for the Canadian economy provide support for the 'credit view' of the monetary policy transmission mechanism. They also show that bank credit to persons affects real output in the short run, whereas bank credit to businesses does not. In other words, consumers but not the business firms appear to be credit constrained.

The countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have gone through immense political and socioeconomic restructuring after the collapse of communism around 1990. Such transition has affected the lives of populations in these countries in many significant respects. A key aspect of life and wellbeing in any society is that of population health. This paper traces the transitions in population health-life expectancies and mortality rates for both males and females-in seven of the CEE countries during the two decades after the fall of communism. We estimate a series of panel data models to identify some of the common factors that would explain health transitions in these countries, while allowing for country-specific variability. Our findings indicate that the health transitions are strongly country specific. Moreover, income per capita and trade openness are statistically significant common contributors to health transitions. IntroductionTwo decades have passed since the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) like countries in the former Soviet Union went through immense political and socioeconomic restructuring that began around 1990 with the collapse of communism. Since then, they have embarked on a transition from closed, totalitarian, and centrally planned economies towards open, democratic, and market-based economies. Such transition has affected the lives of populations in these countries in many significant respects. Many people in these countries have had renewed hopes for improved living conditions and great expectations for a free and prosperous future comparable to those enjoyed by many in Western and Northern Europe for many years.It is understood that the transition from communism to democratic capitalism has provided natural experiments that allow one to examine the evolution of socioeconomic wellbeing of people in the CEE countries as they restructure their socioeconomic and political institutions away from those of the past to those modeled after Western European institutions. A key aspect of wellbeing in any society is that of population health. So, it is important to examine the evolution of health outcomes in those countries as a result of such historical restructuring over the past two decades. This examination is embedded in the social determinants of health paradigm that views socioeconomic and political structures as the upstream determinants of population health [1][2][3][4].Across the CEE countries, transition has had an immediate and largely adverse impact on health as noted by McKee [5]. Such impact has been mostly related to increased deaths due to road accidents and violence which has happened in disrespect of order and state control by Leichter [6] and Winston et al. [7] among others. Subsequently, mortality rates have fallen and life expectancies improved in these countries, albeit to various degrees.In spite of improvements in health in these transitional countries, their health attainments fall significantly short of those in the Western and Northern Europe. Researchers hav...

BackgroundThere is a vast body of literature on deliberative, participative, or engaged democracy. In the area of health care there is a rapidly expanding literature on deliberative democracy as embodied in various notions of public engagement, shared decision-making (SDM), patient-centered care, and patient/care provider autonomy over the past few decades. It is useful to review such literature to get a sense of the challenges and prospects of introducing deliberative democracy in health care.ObjectiveThis paper reviews the key literature on deliberative democracy and SDM in health care settings with a focus on identifying the main challenges of promoting this approach in health care, and recognizing its progress so far for mapping out its future prospects in the context of advanced countries.MethodSeveral databases were searched to identify the literature pertinent to the subject of this study. A total of 56 key studies in English were identified and reviewed carefully for indications and evidence of challenges and/or promising avenues of promoting deliberative democracy in health care.ResultsTime pressure, lack of financial motivation, entrenched professional interests, informational imbalance, practical feasibility, cost, diversity of decisions, and contextual factors are noted as the main challenges. As for the prospects, greater clarity on conception of public engagement and policy objectives, real commitment of the authorities to public input, documenting evidence of the effectiveness of public involvement, development of patient decision supports, training of health professionals in SDM, and use of multiple and flexible methods of engagement leadership suited to specific contexts are the main findings in the reviewed literature.ConclusionSeeking deliberative democracy in health care is both challenging and rewarding. The challenges have been more or less identified. However, its prospects are potentially significant. Such prospects are more likely to materialize if deliberative democracy is pursued more systematically in the broader sociopolitical domains.

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