This text examines the responses to the challenges imposed by reforms in Mexico's economic and political systems, and the international economic community for transparent and fair business dealings. Weighing goals of economic reform against its results, prospects for further reforms are evaluated.

This is the first book to fully review the Mexican health system, its organization and governance, health financing, health care provision, health reforms, and health system performance. The book is based on the most recent data and focuses on the three main components that constitute Mexico’s health system: 1) employment-based social insurance programs, 2) public assistance services for the uninsured, and 3) a private sector composed of service providers, insurers, and pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers and distributors.

Ten years after the introduction of publically-funded universal health insurance, the Mexican health system finds itself at a critical juncture.

Mexico's private sector continues to confront challenges imposed not only by reforms in the country's economic and political systems, but also by demands of the international economic community for transparent and fair business dealings. In this book, scholars and business leaders examine the responses to these challenges, weighing the goals of economic reform against its results, assessing the effect of economic modernization on sectors of the Mexican economy, and evaluating the political, economic, and social prospects for further reforms.

The objective of this paper is to describe the evolution, composition, and determinants of financing to the nonfinancial private sector in Mexico between 2000 and 2005. Supported by the macroeconomic environment and financial system reforms, total financing to the private sector (particularly consumer credit) increased relative to GDP, while accessibility and affordability generally improved. Equity issuance did not play an important role during the period under consideration. Although the supply of financing shifted toward domestic nonbank providers, commercial banks remain the primary source of funding. Significant progress was made in cleaning up bank loan portfolios and in strengthening financial system soundness and infrastructure. The prospects for continued private sector financing growth remain very positive, but financing is not spread out evenly across all market segments. The authors conclude with some policy implications to further facilitate deeper and broader financing of the private sector.

Seventeen in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2020 measures aspects of regulation affecting 10 areas of everyday business activity.

This volume represents the most important work to date on one of the pressing policy issues of the moment: the privatization of social security. Although social security is facing enormous fiscal pressure in the face of an aging population, there has been relatively little published on the fundamentals of essential reform through privatization. Privatizing Social Security fills this void by studying the methods and problems involved in shifting from the current system to one based on mandatory saving in individual accounts. "Timely and important. . . . [Privatizing Social Security] presents a forceful case for a radical shift from the existing unfunded, pay-as-you-go single national program to a mandatory funded program with individual savings accounts. . . . An extensive analysis of how a privatized plan would work in the United States is supplemented with the experiences of five other countries that have privatized plans." —Library Journal "[A] high-powered collection of essays by top experts in the field."—Timothy Taylor, Public Interest