Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Government response to increased demand for pub...

Research

Electronic data

  • Cyclical_Health_Care_20_Oct_2020

    Rights statement: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in European Journal of Political Economy. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in European Journal of Political Economy, 68, 2021 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101988

    Accepted author manuscript, 528 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC-ND: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Links

Text available via DOI:

Keywords

View graph of relations

Government response to increased demand for public services: The cyclicality of government health expenditures in the OECD

Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review

Published
Article number101988
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>3/06/2021
<mark>Journal</mark>European Journal of Political Economy
Volume68
Number of pages18
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date5/12/20
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

The more that health care expenditures are financed by general taxation, the greater the discretion governments are likely to exercise when timing increases in health care expenditures. Vote-maximising governments time increases in health care expenditures to occur in economic upturns, when voters are not as aware of the required increase in taxation. In recessions, they have an incentive to sustain expenditures on health care by diverting expenditures from other public expenditure programmes that voters perceive as low priority. In this way, government pursuit of a political agenda is likely to exert a systematic influence on the cyclicality of government expenditure. Predictions are tested with reference to the cyclicality of government health expenditures, for a sample of OECD countries from 2000 to 2012.

Bibliographic note

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in European Journal of Political Economy. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in European Journal of Political Economy, 68, 2021 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101988