IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v122y2014i2p220-223.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Disease or utopia? Testing Baumol in education

Author

Listed:
  • Chen, Xin
  • Moul, Charles C.

Abstract

Baumol’s Cost Disease offers a compelling hypothesis of rising unit costs in stagnant sectors, but increased productivity in progressive sectors may generate the same prediction through income effects. We examine quantity (rather than expenditure) data from the U.S. educational sector to distinguish between these explanations. Our results indicate significant negative impacts of manufacturing productivity on teacher–pupil ratios.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen, Xin & Moul, Charles C., 2014. "Disease or utopia? Testing Baumol in education," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 220-223.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:122:y:2014:i:2:p:220-223
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2013.11.032
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176513005260
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2013.11.032?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hartwig, Jochen, 2008. "What drives health care expenditure?--Baumol's model of 'unbalanced growth' revisited," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 603-623, May.
    2. Tyler Cowen, 1996. "Why I do not believe in the cost-disease," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 20(3), pages 207-214, September.
    3. Robinson, Joan, 1969. "Macroeconomics of Unbalanced Growth: A Belated Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(4), pages 633-633, Part I Se.
    4. Colombier, Carsten, 2012. "Drivers of health care expenditure: Does Baumol's cost disease loom large?," FiFo Discussion Papers - Finanzwissenschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 12-5, University of Cologne, FiFo Institute for Public Economics.
    5. Jochen Hartwig, 2011. "Can Baumol's model of unbalanced growth contribute to explaining the secular rise in health care expenditure? An alternative test," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(2), pages 173-184.
    6. Bates, Laurie J. & Santerre, Rexford E., 2013. "Does the U.S. health care sector suffer from Baumol's cost disease? Evidence from the 50 states," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 386-391.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Catalin Dragomirescu-Gaina, 2015. "An empirical inquiry into the determinants of public education spending in Europe," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-24, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Akinwande A. Atanda & Andrea K. Menclova & W. Robert Reed, 2016. "Is Health Care Infected by Baumol’s Cost Disease? Test of a New Model Using an OECD Dataset," Working Papers in Economics 16/04, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    2. Siciliani Luigi, 2013. "The Economics of Long-Term Care," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 14(2), pages 343-375, August.
    3. Akinwande Atanda & Andrea Kutinova Menclova & W. Robert Reed, 2018. "Is health care infected by Baumol's cost disease? Test of a new model," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(5), pages 832-849, May.
    4. Akinwande Atanda & W. Robert Reed, 2019. "Not Evidence for Baumol’s Cost Disease," Working Papers in Economics 19/05, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    5. Manabu Nose, 2017. "Estimation of drivers of public education expenditure: Baumol’s effect revisited," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(3), pages 512-535, June.
    6. Vitor Castro, 2017. "Pure, White and Deadly… Expensive: A Bitter Sweetness in Health Care Expenditure," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(12), pages 1644-1666, December.
    7. Morales Sarriera, Javier & Salvucci, Frederick P. & Zhao, Jinhua, 2018. "Worse than Baumol's disease: The implications of labor productivity, contracting out, and unionization on transit operation costs," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 10-16.
    8. Hofmarcher, Maria M. & Festl, Eva & Bishop-Tarver, Leslie, 2016. "Health sector employment growth calls for improvements in labor productivity," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(8), pages 894-902.
    9. Bates, Laurie J. & Santerre, Rexford E., 2013. "Does the U.S. health care sector suffer from Baumol's cost disease? Evidence from the 50 states," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 386-391.
    10. Bradley Rossen & Akhter Faroque, 2016. "Diagnosing the Causes of Rising Health-Care Expenditure in Canada: Does Baumol's Cost Disease Loom Large?," American Journal of Health Economics, MIT Press, vol. 2(2), pages 184-212, Spring.
    11. Atanda, Akinwande & Reed, W. Robert, 2020. "Not Evidence for Baumol's Cost Disease. A replication study of Hartwig (Journal of Health Economics, 2008)," International Journal for Re-Views in Empirical Economics (IREE), ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 4(2020-1), pages 1-10.
    12. Jochen Hartwig & Jan-Egbert Sturm, 2014. "Robust determinants of health care expenditure growth," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(36), pages 4455-4474, December.
    13. Lars-Erik Borge & Kjetil Hatlebakk Hove & Tobias Lillekvelland & Per Tovmo, 2018. "Cost disease in defense and public administration: Baumol and politics," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(1), pages 1-18, April.
    14. Bates, Laurie & Santerre, Rexford, 2013. "Is the U.S. Private Education Sector Infected by Baumol’s Cost Disease? Evidence from the 50 States," MPRA Paper 52300, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Maik T. Schneider & Ralph Winkler, 2021. "Growth and Welfare under Endogenous Lifetimes," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 123(4), pages 1339-1384, October.
    16. Colombier, Carsten, 2012. "Drivers of health care expenditure: Does Baumol's cost disease loom large?," FiFo Discussion Papers - Finanzwissenschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 12-5, University of Cologne, FiFo Institute for Public Economics.
    17. Jamiil Jeetoo, 2020. "Healthcare Expenditure and Baumol Cost Disease in Sub-Sahara Africa," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(4), pages 2704-2716.
    18. Keegan, Conor & Brick, Aoife & Bergin, Adele & Wren, Maev-Ann & Whyte, Richard & Henry, Edward, 2020. "Projections of expenditure for public hospitals in Ireland, 2018–2035, based on the Hippocrates Model," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number RS117, June.
    19. Potrafke, Niklas, 2010. "The growth of public health expenditures in OECD countries: Do government ideology and electoral motives matter?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 797-810, December.
    20. Carsten Colombier, 2018. "Population ageing in healthcare – a minor issue? Evidence from Switzerland," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(15), pages 1746-1760, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Education costs; Baumol cost disease; Teacher–pupil ratios;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:122:y:2014:i:2:p:220-223. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.