Re-visiting the Health Care Luxury Good Hypothesis: Aggregation, Precision, and Publication Biases?

Joan Costa-Font, Marin Gemmill and Gloria Rubert
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Gloria Rubert: Universitat de Barcelona

No 197, Working Papers in Economics from Universitat de Barcelona. Espai de Recerca en Economia

Abstract: While a growing literature examining the relationship between income and health expenditures suggests that health care is a luxury good, this conclusion is contentiously debated due to heterogeneity of the existing results. This paper tests the luxury good hypothesis using meta-regression analysis, taking into consideration publication selection, precision, and aggregation bias. The findings suggest that publication bias exists, a result that is robust irrespectively of the tests employed. Precision and aggregation bias also appear to play a role in the generation of estimates. The corrected income elasticity estimates range from 0.26 to 0.84, although we cannot reject the luxury good hypothesis for some of the performed corrections.

JEL-codes: I1 I10 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Biases in the healthcare luxury good hypothesis?: a meta‐regression analysis (2011)
Working Paper: Re-visiting the health care luxury good hypothesis: aggregation, precision, and publication biases? (2009)
Working Paper: Re-visiting the Health Care Luxury Good Hypothesis: Aggregation, Precision, and Publication Biases? (2009)
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