 Can Baumol's model of unbalanced growth contribute to explaining the secular rise in health care expenditure? An alternative testApplied Economics, 2011, vol. 43, issue 2, 173-184 Abstract: In a recent paper, I argued that Baumol's model of 'unbalanced growth' offers a ready explanation for the observed secular rise in Health Care Expenditure (HCE) in rich countries. Baumol's model implies that HCE is driven by wage increases in excess of productivity growth. I tested this hypothesis empirically, using data from a panel of 19 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries and found robust evidence in favour of Baumol's theory. An alternative way to test Baumol's theory is to check whether its implication that variations in the relative price of medical care contribute significantly to explaining variations in health expenditure in the same direction has an empirical grounding. Earlier studies, although mostly not in an explicit attempt to test Baumol's theory, have occasionally rejected this hypothesis. Despite poor data quality of the available medical price indices, I perform the alternative test using data for nine OECD countries. My findings suggest that the relative price of medical care is in fact a statistically significant explanatory variable for health expenditure, thus lending support to Baumol's theory. Date: 2011 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:43:y:2011:i:2:p:173-184 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/00036840802400470 Access Statistics for this article Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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