Is fiscal decentralization good for your health? Evidence from a panel of OECD countries

D Jiménez-Rubio
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Dolores Jiménez Rubio

Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers from HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: In this study I use improved data of fiscal decentralization to re-examine the hypothesis that shifts towards more fiscal decentralization would be accompanied by improvements in population health on a panel of 19 OECD countries. The advantage of the new measure of decentralization is that it reflects better than previous measures the existence of autonomy in the decision making authority of lower tiers of government, a crucial issue in the decentralization process. The results based on panel data estimation techniques robust to heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation show that fiscal decentralization has a substantial and positive effect on health outcomes over the period studied. However, I find that conventional measures of decentralization tend to over-estimate the magnitude of the effect.

Keywords: Fiscal decentralization; health outcomes; OECD countries; panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H77 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:hectdg:10/30

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