MODELLING HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE ON HEALTH CARE IN GREECE
Manos Matsaganis
Athens University of Economics and Business
Theodore Mitrakos
Bank of Greece
Panos Tsakloglou
Athens University of Economics and Business
ABSTRACT
Health expenditure data are known to be afflicted by restricted range, zero values, skewness and kurtosis. Several methods for modelling such data have been suggested in the literature to cope with these problems. This paper compares the performance of several alternative estimators, including two-part models and generalized linear models. The dependent variable is household, not individual, expenditure on health care in Greece, a country where out-of-pocket health expenditure is higher than anywhere else in the European Union, whether as a proportion of GDP, as a share of all health spending, or in per capita terms. To facilitate comparison of model performance, household health expenditure is examined in two different specifications: expenditure on all health care (where zero values are rare) and expenditure on hospital services alone (where zero values are common). Three of the estimators performed almost equally well in terms of mean square error and mean absolute prediction error: a modified two-part model with non-linear least squares in the second part, a constant-variance generalized linear model, and a variance-proportional-to-mean generalized linear model. The findings suggest that no estimator is best under all circumstances, while most alternative estimators produce similar results. The paper concludes by discussing implications for further research.
Keywords: Two-part models; generalized linear models; household expenditure; Greece
JEL codes: I10; C52
Acknowledgements: The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as those of their respective institutions.
Manos Matsaganis
Department of International and European Economics
Athens University of Economics and Business
Patission 76, Athens 10434, Greece
Tel. +30-210-8203380,
fax: +30-210-8214122
Email: matsaganis@aueb.gr