Financial Health Economics

Ralph Koijen, Tomas Philipson and Harald Uhlig ()

No 20075, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We provide a theoretical and empirical analysis of the link between financial and real health care markets. This link is important as financial returns drive investment in medical research and development (R&D), which in turn, affects real spending growth. We document a “medical innovation premium” of 4-6% annually for equity returns of firms in the health care sector. We interpret this premium as compensating investors for government-induced profit risk, and we provide supportive evidence for this hypothesis through company filings and abnormal return patterns surrounding threats of government intervention. We quantify the implications of the premium for the growth in real health care spending by calibrating our model to match historical trends, predicting the share of GDP devoted to health care to be 32% in the long run. Policies that had removed government risk would have led to more than a doubling of medical R&D and would have increased the current share of health care spending by more than 3% of GDP.

JEL-codes: G0 I0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ino
Note: EH EFG
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Koijen, R. S., Philipson, T. J. and Uhlig, H. (2016), Financial Health Economics. Econometrica, 84: 195-242. doi:10.3982/ECTA11182

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Journal Article: Financial Health Economics (2016)
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