Table_1_Resiliency of healthcare expenditure to income shock: Evidence from dynamic heterogeneous panels.docx

Using the World Bank data over the period of 1960–2019, this study aims at estimating the resiliency of health expenditures against gross domestic product (GDP). Long-run and short-run elasticities are calculated using the type of panel time series methods that are exclusively designed for dynamic heterogeneous panels: Mean Group, Pooled Mean Group, and Dynamic Fixed Effects estimators. These methods permit better estimations of elasticity with considerable heterogeneity across the 177 countries included in this study. Along with a standard elasticity estimation, this study estimates country-specific long-run and short-run elasticities along with error correction components. The study finds that the long-run elasticity of income is very close to unity, but short-run coefficients are insignificant for most nations. In addition, most countries revert to long-run equilibrium reasonably quickly if there is shock as the error correction coefficients are negative and, in many cases, very close to one. While for most developed countries, the short-run elasticities are lower in comparison with the short-run elasticities of developing countries indicating that many developing countries may face a larger decrease in health expenditure with the forecasted decline in income due to impending economic recession. Therefore, although this study is not directly intended to capture the post-COVID-19 effects, the study estimates may project the potential responses in health expenditure across countries due to potential income shocks.

本研究基于1960年至2019年的世界银行数据，旨在估算卫生支出对国内生产总值（GDP）的恢复力。通过采用专为动态异质面板设计的面板时间序列方法，如均值组、池化均值组和动态固定效应估计量，计算了长期和短期弹性。这些方法能够更精确地估算包含在研究中的177个国家间的弹性，具有显著的异质性。除了标准的弹性估算外，本研究还估算了特定国家的长期和短期弹性，以及误差修正成分。研究结果表明，收入的长期弹性非常接近于1，但大多数国家的短期系数均不显著。此外，大多数国家在出现冲击时，会迅速回归到长期均衡状态，因为误差修正系数为负，且在许多情况下，非常接近于1。而对于大多数发达国家而言，与发展中国家的短期弹性相比，其短期弹性较低，这表明许多发展中国家可能面临因预期经济衰退而导致的收入下降，从而卫生支出减少的情况更大。因此，尽管本研究并非直接旨在捕捉COVID-19疫情后的影响，但研究估计可能预示各国因潜在的收入冲击而在卫生支出方面的潜在反应。