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The Sisyphus Syndrome in Health Revisited

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Author Info
Peter Zweifel ()
Lukas Steinmann
Patrick Eugster
Abstract

Health care may be similar to Sisyphus work: When the task is about to be completed, work has to start all over again. To see the analogy, consider an initial decision to allocate more resources to health. The likely consequence is an increased number of survivors, who will exert additional demand for health care. With more resources allocated to health, the cycle starts over again. The objective of this paper is to improve on earlier research that failed to find evidence of a Sisyphus syndrome in industrialized countries. This time, there are signs of such a cycle, which however seems to have faded away recently. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005

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File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10754-005-1864-6
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Publisher Info
Article provided by Springer in its journal International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics.

Volume (Year): 5 (2005)
Issue (Month): 2 (June)
Pages: 127-145
Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Handle: RePEc:kap:ijhcfe:v:5:y:2005:i:2:p:127-145

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Web page: http://www.springerlink.com/link.asp?id=106603

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Related research
Keywords: production of health; health care expenditure; dynamic feedback; Sisyphus syndrome;

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

  1. Pedro Pita Barros, 1998. "The black box of health care expenditure growth determinants," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 7(6), pages 533-544.
  2. Peter Zweifel & Stefan Felder & Markus Meiers, 1999. "Ageing of population and health care expenditure: a red herring?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(6), pages 485-496.
  3. Christensen, Laurits R & Jorgenson, Dale W & Lau, Lawrence J, 1973. "Transcendental Logarithmic Production Frontiers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 55(1), pages 28-45, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Jonsson, Bengt, 1991. "Conversion factor instability in international comparisons of health care expenditure," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 227-234, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Sule Akkoyunlu & Frank R. Lichtenberg & Boriss Siliverstovs & Peter Zweifel, 2009. "Spurious correlation in estimation of the health production function: A note," Working Papers 0903, University of Zurich, Socioeconomic Institute. [Downloadable!]
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