Search results

Because of the 2008 global financial crisis aftermaths, economic downturn and prolonged recession, several OECD countries have adopted an austerity compound by significantly reducing public health expenditure (PHE) for dealing with their fiscal pressure and sovereign-debt challenges. Against this backdrop, this study aims to examine the responsiveness of PHE to macro-fiscal determinants, demography, as well to private health insurance (PHI) financing.

The authors gather annual panel data from four international organizations databases for the total of OECD countries from a period lasting from 2000 to 2017. The authors apply static and dynamic econometric methodology to deal with panel data and assess the impact of several parameters on PHE.

The authors’ findings indicate that gross domestic product, fiscal capacity, tax revenues and population aging have a positive effect on PHE. Further, the authors find that both unemployment rate and voluntary private health insurance financing present a negative statistically significant impact on our estimated outcome variable. Different specifications and sample periods applied in the regression models reveal how inseparably associated are PHE and OECD's economies compliance on macro-fiscal policies for offsetting public finances derailment.

Providing more evidence on the responsiveness of PHE to several macro-fiscal drivers, it can be a helpful tool for governments to reconsider their persistence on fiscal adjustments measures and rank public health financing to the top of their political agenda. Health systems policies for meeting Universal Health Coverage (UHC) objectives, they should also take into consideration the voluntary PHI institution, especially for economies with insufficient fiscal capacity to raise public health financing.

To the best of knowledge, the impact of unemployment and voluntary PHI funding on public health financing, apart from other macro-fiscal and demographical parameters effect, remains unnoticed in the existing published studies on the topic.

The aim of this paper is to study the technical and scale efficiency of a set of tax offices (Inland Revenue) in Greece during the period 2001‐2006.

The methodology used to estimate efficiency scores and Greek tax office ranking was the data envelopment analysis. In addition window analysis was used to detect efficiency trends and stability over time. Tobit analysis was applied to explain whether non‐discretionary factors play a role in tax office's performance.

The results underline that “scale size” and the structure of regional economy where tax offices operate are important factors affecting their efficiency.

Despite the limitations related to the data set, the empirical work suggests that future research may need to concentrate on the dynamic factors i.e. characteristics of the regional where the tax office is situated which could play a significant role in a tax office performance.

The analysis provides information on tailor‐made political and administrative measures that can lead to improvements in the general infrastructure behind the tax office system in Greece.

Considering that the emerging results needed to be evaluated and considered with a sceptical eye, the present study simply highlights the importance of the information (without sensationalizing it) from the policymakers' perspective and in so doing perhaps provide an additional information resource on which they can base their decisions and policies.