Financing essential HIV services: a new economic agenda.

Anna Vassall and colleagues discuss the need for, and challenges facing, innovative and sustainable financing of the HIV response. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

HIV/AIDS, demography and development: individual choices versus public policies in SSA

Despite the increasing rate of diffusion of effective therapies, the battle against HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is far from being over. Three main challenges are that the epidemics might paralyse or reverse the fertility transition, the expansion of the resources needed to finance the fight against HIV, and the emerging resistance to anti-retroviral treatments. This research proposes a UGT-like model showing the complexity of the interplay amongst the (macro)economy, the epidemics, their endogenous feedback on mortality and fertility and the central role of policy actions aimed to fight HIV. The disease-induced increase in adult mortality can hamper economic development by its upward pressure on the precautionary demand for children and downward pressure on education. This can dramatically reduce physical and human capital accumulation

Financing HIV/AIDS programs in sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper offers an analysis of the costs and the financing of HIV/AIDS programs for countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The rate of external financing varies with gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, but not much at all with HIV prevalence. In six of the thirty-four countries examined, the costs of HIV/AIDS programs will exceed 3 percent of GDP by 2015. Most of these are low-income countries. Considerable external support at current rates in these countries would help contain the fiscal costs to around 1 percent of GDP. But if that support dwindles, countries would have to borrow money or cut back on their own spending for HIV/AIDS

The Economic Consequences of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa

The paper provides an analysis of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the health sector, public education, the supply of labor and the returns to training in nine Southern African countries. Drawing on the preceding sections, it assesses the impact of HIV/AIDS on per capita income in a neoclassical growth framework. HIV/AIDS affects per capita income mainly through its impact of human capital, as measured by the supply of experienced workers. Other factors include the impact on capital accumulation, on education, and on total factor productivity.

ICT Equipment Investment and Growth in Low- and Lower-Middle-Income Countries

While production of ICT equipment plays a subordinate role for economic growth in most of these countries, they do benefit from capital deepening arising from falling prices of ICT equipment. Adapting established growth accounting approaches to the data environment of low-income countries, we quantify the growth impacts of absorption of ICT equipment, finding that ICT-related capital deepening contributed 0.2 percentage points to growth in low-income countries, and 0.3 percentage points in low-middle-income countries. The latter is about half the level typically found for industrialized countries.Economic growth;Development;Developing countries;Capital;Economic models;Emerging markets;Information technology;Low-income developing countries;Productivity;Telephone systems;trade data, technological advances, net exports, factor shares, technologies, trade flows, output growth, domestic production, technological change, partner country, technological progress, partner countries, information and communication technologies, world economy, data processing, data processing equipment, economic cooperation, data reporting, trade effect, multiplier effects, data sources, net exporter, imperfect competition, world trade, world growth, global trade, communication technology, trade partners, trade patterns, gross exports, information technologies, global market, information processing, bilateral trade, import tariffs, indirect taxes, commodity trade, bilateral trade flows, computer price, patterns of trade, world exports, information and communication technology

It's Not What You Make, It's How You Use IT: Measuring the Welfare Benefits of the IT Revolution Across Countries

This Paper analyses the welfare benefits from falling relative prices of IT (Information Technology) goods across a wide range of countries. Using two separate methodologies and datasets, we find that welfare benefits mainly accrue to users of IT, not their producers, because of falling relative prices. This is important, as IT production and use are highly differentiated across countries, and implies that earlier work on how IT production affects real GDP, while useful in calibrating the overall benefits of the IT revolution, are a less valuable way of assessing the distribution of benefits.information technology; technological change; terms of trade; welfare benefits