“Is post-communist health spending unusual? A comparison with established market economies,“ co-authored with: John McHale. The Economics of Transition. 2000, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 369-399.

Kornai János: “Is post-communist health spending unusual? A comparison with established market economies,“ co-authored with: John McHale. The Economics of Transition. 2000, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 369-399.

KORNAI and MCHALE original 25 and the additional 56 is not a clear-cut division between the better off and the less well off, we are interested to see if the previously estimated relationships are robust to adding additional (predominantly poorer) countries. Table 4. Regression results for 1990 country cross-section sample (81 countries) Dependent variable: log per capita health spending The cross-section estimates are shown in Table 4. Our strategy is to look at pairs of regressions: one regression forces the coefficients on the included variables and the intercept to be equal across sub-samples and the other regression allows the coefficients (including the intercept) to differ across subsamples. The first regression in Table 4 shows the results of the bivariate regression of health spending on income. The income elasticity is greater than one, but it is less than the pooled estimate and also less than the 1990 cross-section estimate for the OECD sample. Not surprisingly, a graph (not shown) of the Explanatory variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Log per capita GDP 1.215* 1.009* 1.055* 0.962* 1.211* 1.083* (0.035) (0.048) (0.066) (0.078) (0.066) (0.079) OECD dummy*log per capita GDP 0.622* 0.576** 0.414*** (0.178) (0.252) (0.237) Elderly dependency rate 4.894* 4.954 1.922 3.208 (share of population 65 and over) (1.587) (2.979) (1.771) (2.773) OECD dummy*elderly dependency -4.712 -1.596 rate (3.966) (3.891) Female to male labour force ratio 0.369***0.112 0.446** 0.339 (0.198) (0.224) (0.189) (0.214) OECD dummy*female to male labour 0.340 0.112 force ratio (0.622) (0.574) Public share of total health spending 0.706* 0.993* (0.223) (0.261) OECD dummy*public share of total -1.52* health spending (0.562) OECD dummy -5.376* -1.933** -2.791 (1.688) (2.101) (2.055) Constant -4.840 -3.316 -1.070 -3.210 -4.896 ^.733 Adjusted R2 0.94 0.94 0.95 0.96 0.96 0.96 Observations 81 81 81 81 81 81 Notes: Standard errors are in parentheses. ’Significance at the 1 per cent level; ’’Significance at the 5 per cent level; ’’’Significance at the 10 per cent level.