Are Public-Private Components of Health Care Expenditures Converging Among OECD Countries? Evidence from a Nonlinear Panel Unit Root Test

Abstract

Many countries devote an increasing proportion of their economic resources to produce and provide health care services. Looking at the written economic literature, it can be seen that although there is work on convergence in health expenditures, these studies are generally based on linearity assumption. In this study, the validity of the convergence hypothesis on the public, private and total per capita health expenditures are analyzed by non-linear panel unit root tests in a sample of 18 OECD countries, covering Turkey, over the period 1979-2016. The fmdings of the analysis show that the convergence hypothesis is valid only for private per capita health expenditure.