Modelling health care expenditures; overview of the literature and evidence from a panel time series model
Abstract
The first purpose of this paper is to give an up to date overview of the literature on health care expenditures. Secondly, this paper contributes to the existing literature by investigating the impact of several factors on health care expenditures in an empirical analysis using an error-correction model. Health care expenditures in industrial countries have been growing rapidly over the past forty years. This rapid growth jeopardizes the sustainability of public budgets and causes an increasing interest in the determinants of health care expenditures. Additional to the 'usual suspects' for rising health care expenditures, we pay attention to a somewhat neglected driving factor, which is the increase in the relative price of health care compared to other goods and services. We find that the increasing price of health care helps to explain the increase in real health care expenditures. However, the use of health care in volume terms is negatively affected by the increasing price. This effect seems to be stronger in periods of cost containment policy. Consistent with most recent findings in the literature, we find that income and ageing are important drivers of health care expenditures.Download Info
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Paper provided by CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis in its series CPB Discussion Paper with number 121.Length:
Date of creation: Feb 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cpb:discus:121
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Related research
Keywords:Find related papers by JEL classification:
- I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
- H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2009-05-16 (All new papers)
- NEP-HEA-2009-05-16 (Health Economics)
References
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Kamil Dybczak & Bartosz Przywara, 2010. "The role of technology in health care expenditure in the EU," European Economy - Economic Papers 400, Directorate General Economic and Monetary Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
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