What drives public health care expenditure growth? Evidence from Swiss cantons, 1970–2012

Thomas Braendle and Carsten Colombier

Health Policy, 2016, vol. 120, issue 9, 1051-1060

Abstract: A better understanding of the determinants of public health care expenditures is key to designing effective health policies. We integrate demand and supply-side determinants and factors from political economy into an empirical analysis of the highly decentralized Swiss health care system and control for major health care finance reforms. We compile a novel data set of the cantonal health care expenditure in Switzerland, which currently amounts to about one fifth of total health care expenditure. We analyze the period 1970–2012 and use dynamic panel estimation methods. We find that per capita income, the unemployment rate and the share of foreigners are positively related to public health care expenditure growth. With regard to political economy aspects, public health care expenditures increase with the share of women elected to parliament. However, institutional restrictions for politicians, such as fiscal rules, do not appear to limit public health care expenditure growth.

Keywords: Health expenditures; Government financing; Public hospitals; Statistical data analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851016301816
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: What Drives Public Health Care Expenditure Growth? Evidence from Swiss Cantons, 1970-2012 (2015)
Working Paper: What drives public health care expenditure growth? Evidence from Swiss cantons, 1970-2012 (2015)
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:eee:hepoli:v:120:y:2016:i:9:p:1051-1060

DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2016.07.009

Access Statistics for this article

Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput

More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu () and ().