Health care expenditures in OECD countries
Subtitle: a panel unit root and cointegration analysis
By: by Christian Dreger, Hans-Eggert Reimers.
Contributors: Reimers, Hans-Eggert
Series: Discussion paper ;; no. 1469; Discussion paper (Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit : Online) ;; no. 1469
Publisher: IZA
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Bonn, Germany
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Medical care, Cost of.; Health services administration.; Income.
Description: "This paper investigates the link between health care expenditures and GDP for a sample of 21 OECD countries using recent developed panel cointegration techniques. In contrast to previous studies, the analysis accounts for the fact that health care expenditures are not only determined by income. The other driving force is medical progress, which is proxied by different variables, like life expectancy, infant mortality and the share of the elderly. In the extended models, a cointegration relationship can be established among the variables. The income elasticity is not different from unity, implying that health care expenditures are not a luxury good. This finding is robust for alternative measures of medical progress. The evidence is unchanged, if alternative estimators of the cointegration vector are used. Controlling for cross section dependency does not affect the principal results, as cointegration can be found even in a model among nonstationary common factors"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.
Notes: Also available in print.
Includes bibliographical references.
Title from PDF file as viewed on 4/26/2005.
System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.