Welcome to my home page. I am a Professor of Economics at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1973, after finishing graduate school at the University of Michigan and spending two years at the University of Wisconsin in The Institute for Research on Poverty and the Economics Department, I came to Chapel Hill. Except for leaves during which I have worked for the U.S. government, The Brookings Institution and The World Bank in Washington and The World Bank in Kampala, Uganda, I have lived in Chapel Hill since 1973.

My early teaching and research was in Public Finance, a field in which I still teach undergraduate courses. My public finance oriented research focus, on expenditure programs, such as school lunch, food stamps and public education, gradually led me to my present professional orientation in Health Economics. During 1985-87, during a stint at the World Bank I co-authored that international development organization’s official policy on Financing Health Services (Financing Health Services in Developing Countries: An Agenda for Reform) That document was approved by the member nations in 1987 and remains the official health care financing policy of the World Bank.

After that period of World Bank employment I returned to UNC and developed, in the Economics Department, a Ph. D. major in Health Economics. The program was developed to emphasize analysis for developing countries, and to fill what I perceived as a major need for such training in Economics departments. That program continues, but now is part of a larger Health Economics program at UNC, in which several faculty in the Economics Department and the School of Public Health do research and teach in both developed and developing country topic areas. The faculty and students in the Health Economics program participate in a joint Health Economics Workshop with Duke University and North Carolina State University, and students from any of the three universities can (and often do!) take courses at the other two.

Much of my research has related to collection and analysis of large survey data sets from developing countries. With Carolina Population Center colleagues I have designed, overseen collection of and analyzed :

The Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey and The China Health and Nutrition Survey

I have also directed large data collection and analysis projects for the World Bank in Nigeria and Sri Lanka. Presently I am advising the Government of Uganda on Malaria Control and Survey Data Collection projects that follow-up on my recent two year residence in Uganda working for the World Bank as East Africa Health Reform Advisor.

At present my major research interests include:

1) Evaluation of Health Service Decentralization Programs

2) Estimation of Costs and Efficient Allocation of Resources for Reproductive Health Services

3) Health Service Finance and Impacts on Needy Populations

There is more, but those who are still interested can see my vitae.