Unit root properties of OECD health care expenditure and GDP data

• Published in: Health economics Vol. 11; no. 4; pp. 371 - 376
• Main Authors: MacDonald, Garry, Hopkins, Sandra
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 01.06.2002; Wiley Periodicals Inc
• Series: Health Economics
• Subjects: Cross-Cultural Comparison; Data Interpretation, Statistical; Developed Countries - economics; Econometrics; Europe; European Union; Expenditure; Expenditures; GDP; Gross Domestic Product; Health care; health care expenditure; Health care expenditures; Health care policy; Health economics; Health Expenditures - statistics & numerical data; Humans; Manycountries; Models, Econometric; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries; panel data; Statistical analysis; Studies; Time Factors; Time series; Unit roots; Europe
• ISSN: 1057-9230; 1099-1050
• DOI: 10.1002/hec.657

This note reconsiders the unit root properties of health care expenditure (HCE) and gross domestic product (GDP) for OECD countries. The time‐series properties of this data set has been much discussed in the literature with contrasting results from the application of a range of test procedures. We use a recently developed test to examine the relationship between the two variables. The results in this paper confirm earlier findings that when the data are considered as a panel, there is strong evidence of unit roots in both GDP and HCE data. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.