Escalating costs have made the accessibility of drugs one of the biggest challenges faced by the Malaysian government. The government agreed to regulate drug prices by means of external reference ...pricing, but its proposed policy had a setback owing to much opposition from the pharmaceutical industry. The policy did gain support from the public and from non-governmental organisations because it ensured easy access to affordable medicines. Comments from public consultations with key stakeholders were used to explore stakeholders' perceptions of the external reference pricing policy. A total of 140 comments were analysed for this study. Stakeholders' views were classified as being from the Socioeconomic, industrial, and government sectors. To summarise, the government must carefully manage and consider stakeholders' views to ensure a sound policy. Using Mendelow's stakeholder mapping, this study mapped out stakeholders' views in a systematic approach. The classification of different stakeholders' views and recommendations led to suggestions for reviewing current practices in pharmaceutical pricing regulations in the Malaysian healthcare system. The analyses can be extended to other countries that face similar concerns.
Informal employment is a critical source of income for both internal migrants and non-migrants. This study uses the Rural–Urban Migration in Indonesia (RUMiI) project data for 2008 and 2009 to ...investigate the role of informal employment in earnings among internal migrants and non-migrants in Indonesia while considering the broader nature of informal employment and remuneration. Results show that when using a detailed measure of informality, income consequences of more intensive informal employment are severe, which had not been recognised in the literature. Some of the largest earnings reductions resulting from moving to more informal employment were experienced by non-migrants.
In reviewing the population policy in 1984, the Malaysian government called for a major shift from family planning to family and human resource development to achieve an ultimate population of 70 ...million by 2100. However, regardless of the government's initiatives since 1984, Malaysia's fertility rate still declined. This study examines the short-run and long-run relationship and causality between female labour force participation rate, infant mortality rate and fertility in a developing country in Asia - Malaysia. We employ the unit root test which allows for two structural breaks, and the break dates are then used as dummy variables in the bounds testing procedure within an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modelling approach and Granger-causality test. The results indicate that mortality changes have a significant and positive long-run impact on fertility rate and women's child bearing decisions are unaffected by their employment situation. In addition, we do not find evidence that presence of children hinders re-employment and continuous female employment.
Escalating costs have made the accessibility of drugs one of the biggest challenges faced by the Malaysian government. The government agreed to regulate drug prices by means of external reference ...pricing, but its proposed policy had a setback owing to much opposition from the pharmaceutical industry. The policy did gain support from the public and from non-governmental organisations because it ensured easy access to affordable medicines. Comments from public consultations with key stakeholders were used to explore stakeholders' perceptions of the external reference pricing policy. A total of 140 comments were analysed for this study. Stakeholders' views were classified as being from the Socioeconomic, industrial, and government sectors. To summarise, the government must carefully manage and consider stakeholders' views to ensure a sound policy. Using Mendelow's stakeholder mapping, this study mapped out stakeholders' views in a systematic approach. The classification of different stakeholders' views and recommendations led to suggestions for reviewing current practices in pharmaceutical pricing regulations in the Malaysian healthcare system. The analyses can be extended to other countries that face similar concerns.
