OECD Economics Department Working Papers
Working papers from the Economics Department of the OECD that cover the full range of the Department’s work including the economic situation, policy analysis and projections; fiscal policy, public expenditure and taxation; and structural issues including ageing, growth and productivity, migration, environment, human capital, housing, trade and investment, labour markets, regulatory reform, competition, health, and other issues.
The views expressed in these papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD or of the governments of its member countries.
- ISSN: 18151973 (online)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/18151973
The drivers of public health spending
Integrating policies and institutions
This paper investigates the impact of policies and institutions on health expenditures for a large panel of OECD countries for the period 2000-10. We use a set of 20 policy and institutional indicators developed by the OECD characterising the main supply-side, demand-side, and public management, coordination and financing features of health systems. The impact of these indicators is tested alongside control variables related to demographic (dependency ratio) and non-demographic (income, prices and technology) drivers of health expenditures per capita. Overall, there is a reasonably good fit between the expected signs of the coefficients for the institutional indicators and the actual estimates. By integrating the role of policies and institutions, together with the other primary determinants, our analysis is able to explain most of the cross-country variation in public health expenditures.
Keywords: health policies and institutions, public health expenditures, demographic and non-demographic effects, cross-country variation, linear and non-linear estimates
JEL:
H51: Public Economics / National Government Expenditures and Related Policies / Government Expenditures and Health;
J11: Labor and Demographic Economics / Demographic Economics / Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts;
C1: Mathematical and Quantitative Methods / Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General;
I18: Health, Education, and Welfare / Health / Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health;
I12: Health, Education, and Welfare / Health / Health Behavior
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