Rodríguez Alejandro F, Nieves Valdés M
Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial, Universidad de Talca, Camino a los Niches KM 1, Curicó, Chile.
Escuela de Gobierno, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Diagonal Las Torres 2640, Peñalolén, Santiago de Chile, Chile.
Int J Health Econ Manag. 2019 Jun;19(2):115-153. doi: 10.1007/s10754-018-9250-3. Epub 2018 Sep 28.
This paper provides empirical evidence of the existence of a long-run causal relationship between GDP and health care expenditures, for a group of Latin American and the Caribbean countries and for OECD countries for the period 1995-2014. We estimated the income elasticity of health expenditure to be equal to unity for both groups of countries, that is, health care in Latin American and OECD countries is a necessity rather than a luxury. We did not find evidence of a causal effect in the opposite direction, i.e. from changes in health expenditure to GDP. We present conclusive evidence of the cross-country dependence of the analyzed series, and consequently we used panel unit root tests, panel cointegration tests, and long-run estimates that are robust to such dependence. Specifically, we use the CIPS panel unit root test and the panel Common Correlated Effects estimator. We also show that the results obtained by mistakenly using methods that assume cross-section independence are unstable.
本文提供了经验证据，证明在1995 - 2014年期间，一组拉丁美洲和加勒比国家以及经合组织国家的国内生产总值（GDP）与医疗保健支出之间存在长期因果关系。我们估计，这两组国家的医疗支出收入弹性均等于1，也就是说，拉丁美洲国家和经合组织国家的医疗保健是一种必需品而非奢侈品。我们没有发现相反方向的因果效应证据，即从医疗支出变化到GDP的因果效应。我们给出了所分析序列存在跨国依赖性的确凿证据，因此我们使用了对这种依赖性具有稳健性的面板单位根检验、面板协整检验和长期估计。具体而言，我们使用了CIPS面板单位根检验和面板共同相关效应估计量。我们还表明，错误地使用假定截面独立性的方法所得到的结果是不稳定的。
