Essays on international comparisons of health care expenditure

• The five papers of this thesis continue the tradition of international comparisons of aggregate health care expenditure. The studies focus on econometric aspects, such as temporal stability of the estimated relationships, their functional form, and discrimination between different regression models. The effects of aggregate income, institutional and socio-demographic factors on health care expenditure are estimated and evaluated. The first paper uses a cross-sectional sample of 19 OECD countries to test a model including ten explanatory variables on the differences in health care expenditure between countries. The model is also compared, statistically, with earlier regression models. The second paper uses a pooled cross-sectional analysis for 19 OECD countries and three years to re-analyse the ten-variable model. The model is again subjected to various misspecification tests including temporal stability of the estimated equation. The third paper uses a pooled cross-sectional, time-series analysis to experiment with dynamic specifications and various pooling techniques. In the fourth and fifth papers, the significance of absolute and relative price in international comparisons of health care expenditure is investigated.This study concludes that aggregate income is the statistically most important factor in cross-national variation in health care expenditure, and that the aggregate income elasticity exceeds unity. However, the data analyzed in this study also indicate that public financing of health care expenditure is associated with lower expenditure per capita, and that countries with a fee for services as the dominant form of remuneration have higher expenditure. The specified health care expenditure equationseems to be more appropriate than earlier models, and the parameters of the model appear to be stable over time, both in slopes and variance.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Tvärvetenskapliga studier inom samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

International comparisons

Health care expenditure

Econometric analysis

cross-national

Determinants of health care expenditure

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH AREAS

TVÄRVETENSKAPLIGA FORSKNINGSOMRÅDEN

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

dok (ämneskategori)