IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/63015.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fiscal space for health in Sub-Saharan African countries: an efficiency approach

Author

Listed:
  • Novignon, Jacob
  • Nonvignon, Justice

Abstract

The study argues that potential savings from efficiency could be effective alternative to increasing health system financing in SSA. Health system efficiency estimates were derived from the Data Envelopment Analysis and Stochastic Frontier Analysis and used to compute potential gains from efficiency. Data was sourced from the World Bank's world development indicators for 45 SSA countries in 2011. The results reveal that average potential saving in health expenditure from improved efficiency was 0.10% and 0.75% of GDP per capita in the DEA and SFA models, respectively. The results also showed that a 1% increase in efficiency of health expenditure reduced infant mortality rate by 0.91% compared to 0.40% reduction in infant mortality if health expenditure increased by 1%. The results imply that in the face of significant economic challenges and burden on government budget, improving health expenditure efficiency to create some fiscal space will be an important step.

Suggested Citation

  • Novignon, Jacob & Nonvignon, Justice, 2015. "Fiscal space for health in Sub-Saharan African countries: an efficiency approach," MPRA Paper 63015, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:63015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/63015/1/MPRA_paper_63015.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Meeusen, Wim & van den Broeck, Julien, 1977. "Efficiency Estimation from Cobb-Douglas Production Functions with Composed Error," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 18(2), pages 435-444, June.
    2. Peter Okwero & Ajay Tandon & Susan Sparkes & Julie McLaughlin & Johannes G. Hoogeveen, 2010. "Fiscal Space for Health in Uganda," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 5949, December.
    3. George Schieber & Cheryl Cashin & Karima Saleh & Rouselle Lavado, 2012. "Health Financing in Ghana," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 11977, December.
    4. Mr. Peter S. Heller, 2005. "Understanding Fiscal Space," IMF Policy Discussion Papers 2005/004, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Alan M. Garber & Jonathan Skinner, 2008. "Is American Health Care Uniquely Inefficient?," NBER Working Papers 14257, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Alan M. Garber & Jonathan Skinner, 2008. "Is American Health Care Uniquely Inefficient?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(4), pages 27-50, Fall.
    7. Federico Belotti & Silvio Daidone & Giuseppe Ilardi & Vincenzo Atella, 2013. "Stochastic frontier analysis using Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 13(4), pages 718-758, December.
    8. Pablo Hernández de Cos & Enrique Moral-Benito, 2011. "Health care expenditure in the oecd countries: efficiency and regulation," Occasional Papers 1107, Banco de España.
    9. Novignon, Jacob, 2015. "On the efficiency of public health expenditure in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does corruption and quality of public institutions matter?," MPRA Paper 39195, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. World Bank, 2011. "World Development Indicators 2011," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2315, December.
    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. Maryam Yaghoubi & Masoud Vahedi Idehlo & Parisa mehdizadeh & Mohammad Meskarpour Amiri, 2023. "Providing a model for financing the treatment costs during biological crises using the fiscal space development approach," Health Economics Review, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.
    2. Mr. Olumuyiwa S Adedeji & Mr. Calixte Ahokpossi & Claudio Battiati & Mrs. Mai Farid, 2016. "A Probabilistic Approach to Fiscal Space and Prudent Debt Level: Application to Low-Income Developing Countries," IMF Working Papers 2016/163, International Monetary Fund.

    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. Novignon, Jacob, 2015. "On the efficiency of public health expenditure in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does corruption and quality of public institutions matter?," MPRA Paper 39195, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Samer Hamidi & Fevzi Akinci, 2016. "Measuring Efficiency of Health Systems of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis," Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 337-347, June.
    3. Novignon, Jacob & Lawanson, Akanni, 2014. "Efficiency of health systems in sub-Sahara Africa: a comparative analysis of time varying stochastic frontier models," MPRA Paper 56897, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Charles Courtemanche & James Marton & Benjamin Ukert & Aaron Yelowitz & Daniela Zapata, 2018. "Early Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Health Care Access, Risky Health Behaviors, and Self‐Assessed Health," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(3), pages 660-691, January.
    5. Rosen Azad Chowdhury & Dilshad Jahan & Tapas Mishra & Mamata Parhi, 2023. "A Quality Dimension? A Re-appraisal of Financial Development and Economic Growth Nexus in a Quality-Quantity Setting," Working Papers 2023-02, Swansea University, School of Management.
    6. Gangopadhyay, Partha & Jain, Siddharth & Bakry, Walid, 2022. "In search of a rational foundation for the massive IT boom in the Australian banking industry: Can the IT boom really drive relationship banking?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    7. Anil Aswani & Zuo-Jun Max Shen & Auyon Siddiq, 2019. "Data-Driven Incentive Design in the Medicare Shared Savings Program," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 67(4), pages 1002-1026, July.
    8. Sabrina Auci & Laura Castellucci & Manuela Coromaldi, 2021. "How does public spending affect technical efficiency? Some evidence from 15 European countries," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(1), pages 108-130, January.
    9. Jagrič, Timotej & Brown, Christine & Boyce, Tammy & Jagrič, Vita, 2021. "The impact of the health-care sector on national economies in selected European countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 90-97.
    10. Forgione, Antonio Fabio & Migliardo, Carlo, 2023. "Mafia risk perception: Evaluating the effect of organized crime on firm technical efficiency and investment proclivity," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    11. Milan Zafirovski, 2022. "Some dilemmas of economic democracy: Indicators and empirical analysis," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 43(1), pages 252-302, February.
    12. Fadlon, Itzik & Van Parys, Jessica, 2020. "Primary care physician practice styles and patient care: Evidence from physician exits in Medicare," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    13. Carine Milcent, 2016. "Upcoding and heterogeneity in hospitals’ response: A Natural Experiment," PSE Working Papers halshs-01340557, HAL.
    14. Zhang, Qizheng & Qian, Zesen & Wang, Shuo & Yuan, Lingran & Gong, Binlei, 2022. "Productivity drain or productivity gain? The effect of new technology adoption in the oilfield market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    15. Dorn, Florian, 2023. "Elections and Government Efficiency," VfS Annual Conference 2023 (Regensburg): Growth and the "sociale Frage" 277700, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    16. Russ Kashian & Nicholas Lovett & Yuhan Xue, 2020. "Has the affordable care act affected health care efficiency?," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 193-233, December.
    17. Margaret Kyle & Heidi Williams, 2017. "Is American Health Care Uniquely Inefficient? Evidence from Prescription Drugs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 486-490, May.
    18. Larry G. Epstein & Hiroaki Kaido & Kyoungwon Seo, 2016. "Robust Confidence Regions for Incomplete Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 1799-1838, September.
    19. Stephen Hall & P. Swamy & George Tavlas, 2012. "Generalized cointegration: a new concept with an application to health expenditure and health outcomes," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 603-618, April.
    20. Orkhan Guliyev & Aijun Liu & Gershom Endelani Mwalupaso & Jarkko Niemi, 2019. "The Determinants of Technical Efficiency of Hazelnut Production in Azerbaijan: An Analysis of the Role of NGOs," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-19, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fiscal space for health; health expenditure; DEA; SFA;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:63015. 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.