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Health Care Expenditure in the European Union Countries: New Insights about the Convergence Process
This paper assesses the convergence process in the health care expenditure for selected European Union (EU) countries over the past 50 years. As a novel contribution, we use bound unit root tests and, for robustness purposes, a series of tests for strict stationarity to provide new insights about th...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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MDPI
2022
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8872178/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35206178 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19041991 |
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author | Albulescu, Claudiu Tiberiu |
author_facet | Albulescu, Claudiu Tiberiu |
author_sort | Albulescu, Claudiu Tiberiu |
collection | PubMed |
description | This paper assesses the convergence process in the health care expenditure for selected European Union (EU) countries over the past 50 years. As a novel contribution, we use bound unit root tests and, for robustness purposes, a series of tests for strict stationarity to provide new insights about the convergence process. We make a comparison between public and private health expenditure per capita and as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP), with a focus on six EU countries with different health care systems in place. When we consider the health expenditure per capita, we report mixed findings. We show that the spread from the group average is stationary in the cases of Finland and Portugal when the overall and public expenditure is considered. In terms of private expenditure, the convergence process is noticed only for Austria. For all other countries included in our sample, we document a non-stationary process, indicating a lack of convergence. This result is robust to the different tests we use. However, when we assess the convergence in terms of the health-expenditure-to-GDP ratio, the convergence process is recorded for Austria only. The robustness check we performed using strict stationarity tests partially confirmed the mixed results we obtained. Therefore, our findings highlight the heterogeneity of the EU health care systems and the need for identification of common solutions to the EU health care systems’ problems in order to enhance their convergence processes. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8872178 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-88721782022-02-25 Health Care Expenditure in the European Union Countries: New Insights about the Convergence Process Albulescu, Claudiu Tiberiu Int J Environ Res Public Health Article This paper assesses the convergence process in the health care expenditure for selected European Union (EU) countries over the past 50 years. As a novel contribution, we use bound unit root tests and, for robustness purposes, a series of tests for strict stationarity to provide new insights about the convergence process. We make a comparison between public and private health expenditure per capita and as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP), with a focus on six EU countries with different health care systems in place. When we consider the health expenditure per capita, we report mixed findings. We show that the spread from the group average is stationary in the cases of Finland and Portugal when the overall and public expenditure is considered. In terms of private expenditure, the convergence process is noticed only for Austria. For all other countries included in our sample, we document a non-stationary process, indicating a lack of convergence. This result is robust to the different tests we use. However, when we assess the convergence in terms of the health-expenditure-to-GDP ratio, the convergence process is recorded for Austria only. The robustness check we performed using strict stationarity tests partially confirmed the mixed results we obtained. Therefore, our findings highlight the heterogeneity of the EU health care systems and the need for identification of common solutions to the EU health care systems’ problems in order to enhance their convergence processes. MDPI 2022-02-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8872178/ /pubmed/35206178 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19041991 Text en © 2022 by the author. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Albulescu, Claudiu Tiberiu Health Care Expenditure in the European Union Countries: New Insights about the Convergence Process |
title | Health Care Expenditure in the European Union Countries: New Insights about the Convergence Process |
title_full | Health Care Expenditure in the European Union Countries: New Insights about the Convergence Process |
title_fullStr | Health Care Expenditure in the European Union Countries: New Insights about the Convergence Process |
title_full_unstemmed | Health Care Expenditure in the European Union Countries: New Insights about the Convergence Process |
title_short | Health Care Expenditure in the European Union Countries: New Insights about the Convergence Process |
title_sort | health care expenditure in the european union countries: new insights about the convergence process |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8872178/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35206178 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19041991 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT albulescuclaudiutiberiu healthcareexpenditureintheeuropeanunioncountriesnewinsightsabouttheconvergenceprocess |