Baumol’s disease and health care inflation

Simple item page
dc.contributorWang, Le
dc.contributorHigginbotham, John
dc.contributorWhitman, Marilyn V.
dc.contributor.advisorPecorino, Paul
dc.contributor.advisorChen, Susan
dc.contributor.authorMann, Christopher
dc.contributor.otherUniversity of Alabama Tuscaloosa
dc.date.accessioned2017-03-01T17:35:56Z
dc.date.available2017-03-01T17:35:56Z
dc.date.issued2015
dc.descriptionElectronic Thesis or Dissertationen_US
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation sets out to determine if the health care sector suffers from low productivity growth and the implications on government finances in the long run. I use the condition treatment approach to measure utilization and price growth in the health care sector with the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey data from 2003-2011. While official inflation estimates are found to be biased by up to 1% per year, health care prices were still growing much faster than other prices. However, this is only true for certain segments of the population. Diseases and other medical conditions experience different productivity growth rates and are distributed uniformly across the population. I also find that much of the inflation is concentrated in ambulatory care events. I test to see if technology is driving event-level inflation by controlling for individual procedures. Contrary to other studies, I find little evidence to support the claim that technology is the main reason behind health care inflation. The results suggest that the health care sector may suffer from the Cost Disease. To study the implication on taxes, I build a theoretical model of unbalanced growth between private and publicly provided goods. As long as the two goods are not substitutable, the tax rate is pushed to the top of the Laffer Curve and redistribution is crowded out in the long-run.en_US
dc.format.extent117 p.
dc.format.mediumelectronic
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.otheru0015_0000001_0002005
dc.identifier.otherMann_alatus_0004D_12405
dc.identifier.urihttps://ir.ua.edu/handle/123456789/2408
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Alabama Libraries
dc.relation.hasversionborn digital
dc.relation.ispartofThe University of Alabama Electronic Theses and Dissertations
dc.relation.ispartofThe University of Alabama Libraries Digital Collections
dc.rightsAll rights reserved by the author unless otherwise indicated.en_US
dc.subjectEconomics
dc.titleBaumol’s disease and health care inflationen_US
dc.typethesis
dc.typetext
etdms.degree.departmentUniversity of Alabama. Department of Economics, Finance, and Legal Studies
etdms.degree.disciplineEconomics (Business)
etdms.degree.grantorThe University of Alabama
etdms.degree.leveldoctoral
etdms.degree.namePh.D.

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
file_1.pdf
Size:
561.48 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download

Collections

Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertations - Department of Economics, Finance & Legal Studies