IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/51324.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Convergence of Total Health Expenditure as a Share of GDP: Evidence from Selected OECD Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Fallahi, Firouz

Abstract

This paper studies convergence in the ratio of total health expenditures to GDP (HEGDP) for a sample of OECD countries over the period 1960-2006. Stochastic convergence is tested using unit root tests, without and with a structural break. Moreover, beta-convergence is examined by applying a method that allows for a structural break and is robust to the presence of unit roots and serial correlation in the errors. We examine whether these countries (1) are converging to the US in terms of HEGDP and (2) share a common structural break. The results support the existence of stochastic convergence for all countries. beta-convergence, however, is supported for some countries only before the break points (regime 1). In regime 2 (the period after the break points) all countries are experiencing divergence. In addition, the estimated break dates are clustered around 1981 and 1988.

Suggested Citation

  • Fallahi, Firouz, 2011. "Convergence of Total Health Expenditure as a Share of GDP: Evidence from Selected OECD Countries," MPRA Paper 51324, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:51324
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/51324/1/MPRA_paper_51324.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gernandt Johannes & Pfeiffer Friedhelm, 2007. "Rising Wage Inequality in Germany," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 227(4), pages 358-380, August.
    2. McCoskey, Suzanne K. & Selden, Thomas M., 1998. "Health care expenditures and GDP: panel data unit root test results," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 369-376, June.
    3. Kwiatkowski, Denis & Phillips, Peter C. B. & Schmidt, Peter & Shin, Yongcheol, 1992. "Testing the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root : How sure are we that economic time series have a unit root?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1-3), pages 159-178.
    4. Timothy J. Vogelsang & Marc Tomljanovich, 2002. "Are U.S. regions converging? Using new econometric methods to examine old issues," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 49-62.
    5. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Lothgren, Mickael, 2000. "On stationarity and cointegration of international health expenditure and GDP," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 461-475, July.
    6. Bernard, Andrew B & Durlauf, Steven N, 1995. "Convergence in International Output," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(2), pages 97-108, April-Jun.
    7. Sala-i-Martin, Xavier X., 1996. "Regional cohesion: Evidence and theories of regional growth and convergence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1325-1352, June.
    8. Hansen, Paul & King, Alan, 1996. "The determinants of health care expenditure: A cointegration approach," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 127-137, February.
    9. Serge Coulombe & Frank C. Lee, 1995. "Convergence across Canadian Provinces, 1961 to 1991," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 28(4a), pages 886-898, November.
    10. Barro, Robert J & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1992. "Convergence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 223-251, April.
      • Barro, R.J. & Sala-I-Martin, X., 1991. "Convergence," Papers 645, Yale - Economic Growth Center.
      • Barro, Robert J. & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1992. "Convergence," Scholarly Articles 3451299, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    11. Jewell, Todd & Lee, Junsoo & Tieslau, Margie & Strazicich, Mark C., 2003. "Stationarity of health expenditures and GDP: evidence from panel unit root tests with heterogeneous structural breaks," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 313-323, March.
    12. Timothy J. Vogelsang, 1998. "Trend Function Hypothesis Testing in the Presence of Serial Correlation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 123-148, January.
    13. Paresh Kumar Narayan, 2007. "Do health expenditures ‘catch‐up’? Evidence from OECD countries," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(10), pages 993-1008, October.
    14. John Nixon, "undated". "Convergence Analysis of Health Care Expenditure in the EU Countries Using Two Approaches," Discussion Papers 99/3, Department of Economics, University of York.
    15. Hansen, Paul & King, Alan, 1998. "Health care expenditure and GDP: panel data unit root test results--comment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 377-381, June.
    16. Joseph P. Newhouse, 1977. "Medical-Care Expenditure: A Cross-National Survey," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 12(1), pages 115-125.
    17. Paresh Kumar Narayan, 2007. "Do health expenditures 'catch-up'? Evidence from OECD countries," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(10), pages 993-1008.
    18. Narayan, Paresh Kumar, 2006. "Examining structural breaks and growth rates in international health expenditures," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 877-890, September.
    19. Robert J. Barro & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1991. "Convergence across States and Regions," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(1), pages 107-182.
    20. Hitiris, Theo & Posnett, John, 1992. "The determinants and effects of health expenditure in developed countries," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 173-181, August.
    21. Aslan, Alper, 2008. "Convergence of per capita health care expenditures in OECD Countries," MPRA Paper 10592, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    22. Jorge Alcalde‐Unzu & Roberto Ezcurra & Pedro Pascual, 2009. "Cross‐country disparities in health‐care expenditure: a factor decomposition," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(4), pages 479-485, April.
    23. Kane, Richard, 2001. "Investigating Convergence of the U.S. Regions: A Time-Series Analysis," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 31(1), pages 1-22.
    24. Carrion-i-Silvestre, Josep Lluis, 2005. "Health care expenditure and GDP: Are they broken stationary?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 839-854, September.
    25. Blomqvist, A. G. & Carter, R. A. L., 1997. "Is health care really a luxury?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 207-229, April.
    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. Ariane Ephemia Ndzignat Mouteyica & Nicholas Ngepah, 2023. "Health outcome convergence in Africa: the roles of immunization and public health spending," Health Economics Review, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 1-17, December.
    2. Clemente, Jesús & Lázaro-Alquézar, Angelina & Montañés, Antonio, 2019. "US state health expenditure convergence: A revisited analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 210-220.
    3. Claudiu Tiberiu Albulescu, 2022. "Health Care Expenditure in the European Union Countries: New Insights about the Convergence Process," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(4), pages 1-16, February.
    4. Nicholas Apergis & Tsangyao Chang & Christina Christou & Rangan Gupta, 2017. "Convergence of Health Care Expenditures Across the US States: A Reconsideration," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 133(1), pages 303-316, August.

    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. Baltagi, Badi H. & Moscone, Francesco, 2010. "Health care expenditure and income in the OECD reconsidered: Evidence from panel data," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 804-811, July.
    2. Niklas Potrafke, 2012. "Political cycles and economic performance in OECD countries: empirical evidence from 1951–2006," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(1), pages 155-179, January.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Hyejin Lee & Dong-Yop Oh & Ming Meng, 2019. "Stationarity and cointegration of health care expenditure and GDP: evidence from tests with smooth structural shifts," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 631-652, August.
    6. Helmut Herwartz & Bernd Theilen, 2003. "The determinants of health care expenditure: testing pooling restrictions in small samples," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(2), pages 113-124, February.
    7. Chakroun, Mohamed, 2009. "Health care expenditure and GDP: An international panel smooth transition approach," MPRA Paper 14322, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Po-Chin Wu & Shiao-Yen Liu & Sheng-Chieh Pan, 2014. "Nonlinear relationship between health care expenditure and its determinants: a panel smooth transition regression model," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 41(4), pages 713-729, November.
    9. Eugene Kouassi & Oluyele Akinkugbe & Noni Oratile Kutlo & J. M. Bosson Brou, 2018. "Health expenditure and growth dynamics in the SADC region: evidence from non-stationary panel data with cross section dependence and unobserved heterogeneity," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 47-66, March.
    10. Héctor Bellido & Lorena Olmos & Juan Antonio Román-Aso, 2019. "Do political factors influence public health expenditures? Evidence pre- and post-great recession," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 20(3), pages 455-474, April.
    11. Mustafa Ozer & Veysel Inal & Mustafa Kirca, 0. "The Relationship Between the Health Services Price Index and The Real Effective Exchange Rate Index in Turkey: A Frequency Domain Causality Analysis," EKOIST Journal of Econometrics and Statistics, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 0(36), pages 21-41, June.
    12. Paresh Kumar Narayan & Seema Narayan, 2008. "The role of permanent and transitory shocks in explaining international health expenditures," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(10), pages 1171-1186, October.
    13. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Lothgren, Mickael, 2000. "On stationarity and cointegration of international health expenditure and GDP," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 461-475, July.
    14. Ekaterini Panopoulou & Theologos Pantelidis, 2012. "Convergence in per capita health expenditures and health outcomes in the OECD countries," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(30), pages 3909-3920, October.
    15. Ärshiya Ämiri & Mikael Linden, 2016. "Income and total expenditure on health in OECD countries: Evidence from panel data and Hsiao's version of Granger non-causality tests," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 1-9.
    16. Muhammad Arshad Khan & Muhammad Iftikhar Ul Husnain, 2019. "Is health care a luxury or necessity good? Evidence from Asian countries," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 213-233, June.
    17. Andrea Leiter & Engelbert Theurl, 2012. "The convergence of health care financing structures: empirical evidence from OECD-countries," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 13(1), pages 7-18, February.
    18. Seher Sülkü & Asena Caner, 2011. "Health care expenditures and gross domestic product: the Turkish case," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 12(1), pages 29-38, February.
    19. G. Emmanuel Guindon & Paul Contoyannis, 2012. "A Second Look At Pharmaceutical Spending As Determinants Of Health Outcomes In Canada," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(12), pages 1477-1495, December.
    20. Giorgia Marini, 2016. "A note on the power of panel cointegration tests – An application to health care expenditure and gdp," Public Finance Research Papers 21, Istituto di Economia e Finanza, DSGE, Sapienza University of Rome.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    convergence; structural breaks; health expenditure; OECD; GDP.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - 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:pra:mprapa:51324. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.