Flat-of-the-Curve Medicine � A New Perspective on the Production of Health

Johannes Schoder () and Peter Zweifel ()
Additional contact information
Johannes Schoder: Socioeconomic Institute, University of Zurich
Peter Zweifel: Socioeconomic Institute, University of Zurich

No 901, SOI - Working Papers from Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich

Abstract: Health economists have studied the determinants of the expected value of health status as a function of medical and nonmedical inputs, often finding small marginal effects of the former. This paper argues that both types of input have an additional benefit, viz. a reduced variability of health status. Using OECD health data for 24 countries between 1960 and 2004, medical and nonmedical inputs are found to reduce the variability of life expectancy. While the evidence supports the "flat-of-the-curve medicine" hypothesis with respect to the expected value of life expectancy and its variability, healthcare expenditure is comparatively effective in reducing variability.

Keywords: production of health; control over health status; Gini coefficient (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I12 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2009-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/51913/1/wp0901.pdf first version, 2009 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:soz:wpaper:0901

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SOI - Working Papers from Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Severin Oswald ().