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  Parties and candidates in the election campaign try to raise the community to vote for them by offering a variety of social policies. However, the public health expenditures have been raised among the candidates as one of the most important tools to attract votes. Thus, this study uses panel data to investigate whether the components of electoral cycle have affected the growth of public health expenditures in both developed and developing countries over the period of 1994-2010. Using the related tests, two methods of static panel (random effects) and dynamic panel estimation were selected. According to the results, the presence of electoral cycles could not be rejected in both types of countries. Based on these results, politicians in every country increase the public health expenditures before the election in hopes of gaining a greater share of people's votes.

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In the current structure of world economy, imports play an important role in the economic development strategy. Although taking the suitable policies for the imports of goods and services is important, but taking the correct strategy is subject to factors affecting imports. In the most of empirical studies, imports are a function of real income and real exchange rate. So, the effect of income inequality on imports of goods and services has less been investigated. Whereas, increase in income inequality causes an increase in the purchasing power of high income people and demand for imported luxury goods and also causes a change in the composition of domestic and imported consuming goods. This study examine the effect of income inequality on import of goods and services in 17 developed countries and 18 developing countries in the period 1990-2010 using generalized method of moment (GMM) analysis. The results indicate that there is a positive relationship between income inequality and imports of goods and services in developed countries while this relation is negative in developing countries. Furthermore, the relationship between GDP and imports of goods and services is positive in both groups of countries, while the relationship between real exchange rate and imports of goods and services is negative in both groups. Thus, policy makers should redistribute income and wealth in favor of the low income people and motivate them to participate in the production sectors, reduce the inequality gap and improve their competitiveness power in the market and enhance the income from the abroad.

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Natural resources as wealth in general and oil and natural gas in particular can have a potentially beneficial impact on the economic prosperity. However, economic experience implies that many of the major oil exporting countries are facing instability in economic growth, Dutch Disease, corruption and under- development. Owing to the fact that natural resources can play a vital role in development, the present study tries to investigate the econometrics relationship between export of natural resources (as a proxy for abundance) and governance indicators (as alternative variables for institutional development) in selected oil-exporting and OECD countries through the application of Generalized Moment of Method (GMM), for the period lasting from 1996 to 2011. Findings of the study revealed that the strong and statistically significant evidence confirms the negative impact of the export of natural resources on the governance index, quality of regulations, rule of law and control of corruption in the selected OPEC’s member countries. Nevertheless, such a negative impact does not have any statistically significant strength in developed countries. This is due to the improvement made in the surveillance, technical and executive mechanisms of the institutions in the selected OECD countries. It seems that the enormous incomes accrued from the export of natural resources in the oil producing countries in question will induce a decrease in transparency and accountability, instability and frequent changes in economic policies, extension of rent-seeking, corruption and authoritarianism.