National Health Insurance and Technology Adoption: Evidence from Taiwan

Generous health-insurance coverage may encourage hospitals to acquire and employ more advanced medical technologies. The authors examine the effects of Taiwan's 1995 implementation of National Health Insurance on technology adoption, ownership, and use by comparing changes in adoption, ownership, and use rates by private hospitals with changes by public nonteaching and public teaching hospitals. Using random-effect panel probit and tobit models, the article finds strong empirical evidence that third-party payment increases the probability of technology adoption, ownership, and use. (JEL H4 , I )     

Health insurance and precautionary saving: A structural analysis

Starr-McCluer (1996) documented an empirical finding showing that US households covered by health insurance saved more than those without coverage, which is inconsistent with the standard consumption–saving theory. This study conducts a structural analysis and suggests that institutional factors, particularly, a social insurance or safety net system and an employment-based health insurance system, can account for this puzzling finding. A dynamic equilibrium model is built that combines these two institutions with heterogeneous agents making endogenous decisions regarding saving, the labor supply and health insurance when they are young. The model, in which agents save in a precautionary manner, can generate Starr-McCluer?s empirical finding. The result implies that Starr-McCluer?s results are not inconsistent with the standard theory of saving under uncertainty, but it does indicate that the standard saving regression model is unable to reveal the precautionary saving motive. Counterfactual experiments are performed to provide implications for empirical analyses.     

A new interpretation for the precautionary saving motive: a note

This paper proposes a new interpretation for the precautionary saving motive: when future income is uncertain, agents increase saving in order to cause a reduction in the disutility due to uncertainty. Furthermore, the paper shows that the usual necessary and sufficient condition for precautionary saving is the condition ensuring this effect to occur and gives new insights into the relationship between risk aversion indexes and precautionary saving.      

The effect of precautionary saving on consumption in Sweden

Uncertainty concerning future income lowers consumption. This is often called the precautionary demand for savings. In this paper the existence of precautionary savings. In this paper the existence of precautionary saving is investigated using Swedish data for the years 1973–1992. As there are no variables for consumers' uncertainty a proxy is used. Assuming an underlying distribution of attitudinal data, a variance series is derived. Including the proxy in different specifications of the consumption function, indication of precautionary saving can be found. As a result, no uncertainty would raise consumption by 4.9%.     

Aggressive oil extraction and precautionary saving: Coping with volatility

The effects of stochastic oil demand on optimal oil extraction paths and tax, spending and government debt policies are analyzed when the oil demand schedule is linear and preferences quadratic. Without prudence, optimal oil extraction is governed by the Hotelling rule and optimal budgetary policies by the tax and consumption smoothing principle. Volatile oil demand brings forward oil extraction and induces a bigger government surplus. With prudence, the government depletes oil reserves even more aggressively and engages in additional precautionary saving financed by postponing spending and bringing taxes forward, especially if it has substantial monopoly power on the oil market, gives high priority to the public spending target, is very prudent, and future oil demand has high variance. Uncertain economic prospects induce even higher precautionary saving and, if non-oil revenue shocks and oil revenue shocks are positively correlated, even more aggressive oil extraction. In contrast, prudent governments deliberately underestimate oil reserves which induce less aggressive oil depletion and less government saving, but less so if uncertainty about reserves and oil demand are positively correlated.     

Precautionary saving under liquidity constraints: evidence from Italy

I empirically investigate precautionary savings under liquidity constraints in Italy using a unique indicator of subjective variance of income growth to measure the strength of the precautionary motive for saving, and a variety of survey-based indicators of liquidity constraints. The main contribution of the paper is twofold. First of all, I attempt to differentiate between the standard precautionary saving caused by uncertainty from the one due to liquidity constraints using an endogenous switching regression approach, which allows me to cope with endogeneity issues associated with sample splitting techniques. Second, I move one step further with respect to previous studies on consumption behaviour by taking explicitly expected liquidity constraints into account. I eventually found the precautionary motive for savings to be stronger for those households who face binding constraints, or expect constraints to be binding in the future. Indeed, a complementarity relation exists between precautionary savings and liquidity constraints.     

The Brazilian wage curve: new evidence from the National Household Survey

This paper reconsiders the Brazilian wage curve using individual data from the National Household Survey at 27 Federative Units over the period 2002–2009. We find evidence in favor of the Brazilian wage curve with an unemployment elasticity of ?0.08. We also find that males in Brazil are significantly more responsive to local unemployment rates (?0.13) than their female counterparts. In fact, we find that the unemployment elasticity for women is statistically insignificant. Applying gender-specific unemployment rates, the elasticity for men decreases to ?0.09, while the elasticity for women remains statistically insignificant. This paper also finds that the estimates for Brazilian wage curve are completely different for the case of formal and informal workers.     

A new interpretation of the condition for precautionary saving in the presence of an interest-rate risk

This note reconsiders the classical problem of precautionary saving in the presence of an interest-rate risk, and provides a new interpretation of the threshold of 2 for the relative prudence index, which characterizes the necessary and sufficient condition for precautionary saving.     

Liquidity constraints, precautionary saving and aggregate consumption: an international comparison

This paper has three objectives. First, to expand Hall's [J. Polit. Econ. 86 (1978) 971] rational expectations permanent income/life cycle hypotheses (REPIH/RELCH) representative agent model to allow for current income consumers, the durable component of total consumer expenditures and for intertemporal substitution, which are often cited as the main reasons for the rejection of Hall's model. Second, to apply this modified model to 20 OECD countries over the post-World War II period. The GMM estimation method is employed. Third, to examine the relative influence of liquidity constraints and precautionary saving on the cross-country variation in the proportion of current income consumers, using cross-country regressions and a non-linear model of panel data. The presence of current income consumers, which is primarily due to liquidity constraints and to a lesser extent to precautionary saving, is the major factor for the rejection of the basic REPIH/RELCH model in all OECD countries.     

Survival of the gene,intergenerational transfers and precautionary saving

This paper provides a model of bequest and investment in children's human capital at low incomes. It posits that parents and children are linked through their common concern of grandchildren and intergenerational transfers provide a material basis for the perpetuation of the family line. The model characterizes intergenerational strategic interactions in a dynamic game theoretical framework. Moreover, it explores intergenerational uncertainty as a source of precautionary saving. In contrast with the existing literature, the model implies that there are qualitative differences between precautionary saving from one's own income uncertainty and precautionary bequests from children's income uncertainty.     

Multi-scale causality between saving and growth: evidence from China

In this article, we use a wavelet-based Granger causality approach to examine the multi-scale causality between saving and growth for China. We show that significant causality runs from saving to growth for most timescales, whereas multi-scale causality from growth to saving is not statistically significant. Our subsample results suggest that economic systems have remarkable effects on the multi-scale causality. Overall, our study provides a novel perspective to deeply explore the relationships between macroeconomic variables.     

Hospital efficiency under global budgeting: evidence from Taiwan

Global budgeting sets a predetermined cap to restrain health expenditure, but the fixed budget for medical providers could result in less efficient services. This paper measures hospital efficiency under global budgeting using simultaneous stochastic frontier analysis, stressing that physicians and dentists within a hospital were under separate budgets in Taiwan. Empirical results show that hospital efficiency was not improved after global budgeting, and physicians were found to be less efficient than dentists. The physicians and dentists within the same hospital were also found to be less integrated after global budgeting. Empirical results show that a joint analysis improves the estimation efficiency from separate analysis and suggest that the aggregate inefficiency came mostly from physicians in hospitals that were small, public, non-teaching, located in small markets and had a low market share. Except for public hospitals, physicians and dentists in the above hospitals were also found to be less integrated.     

台湾地区全民健保制度实施绩效论析

全民健保制度是台湾地区第一个涵盖岛内全体民众的社会保险制度。自实施以来,全民健保已经取得较好的绩效,表现在岛内民众就医公平性和可及性大大提高、民众满意度较高、医疗保健总支出成长趋于稳定。全民健保制度不仅使岛内民众得到实惠,而且其成功的经验引起了国际健康保险界的关注。     

Consumption and precautionary saving: An empirical analysis under both financial and environmental risks

This paper studies the empirical relationship between consumption and saving under two different sources of uncertainty: financial risk and environmental risk. The analysis is carried out using time series data for six advanced economies in the period 1965–2007.The results support the theoretical conclusions that both financial risk alone and the interaction between financial and environmental risks influence consumption. Moreover, we suggest a solution to some shortcomings which affect the empirical analysis performed with one-argument utility functions. Finally, we provide new estimates of indexes of relative risk aversion and relative prudence, as well as relative preference of environmental quality.     

Impact of National Health Insurance on Entry and Competition in Remote Areas,Evidence from Taiwan's Dental Market

This paper assesses the change in the supply of dental clinics after the implementation of Taiwan's National Health Insurance (NHI). Even though the government has enforced lower prices of treatment since the implementation of NHI, the increase in use could actually result in higher revenue for dentists. The higher profit could prompt dentists to attempt to enter markets that were previously unprofitable. This paper tested if NHI increased the dental clinic supply in geographically isolated areas by investigating whether the required minimum market size was reduced. We found that following the implementation of NHI, the per‐dental clinic minimum market size significantly decreased. In addition, the decreased minimum market sizes were enabled by a corresponding increase in variable profits which is equal to the difference between price and average variable costs. This implies that the NHI‐enlarged health care demand compensates for the possible losses of dental clinics due to price regulation. Furthermore, the results also suggest that the post‐NHI dental market becomes more competitive when there is a second entrant in the market, and the level of competition approaches perfect competition when three and more dental clinics serve one market.     

Technology elasticity and potential on energy saving and emission reduction: evidence from China

This article investigates the elasticity of different technology choices to energy efficiency and chemical oxygen demand/ammonia nitrogen emission reducing efficiency among 38 industries in China from 2008 to 2011. With data envelopment analysis, total-factor productivity growth, the common measure of technical progress, is divided into different parts: technical efficiency relative to the frontier, technology change and scale efficiency, which are regarded as three different choices of technological progress. For various industries, technology elasticity is quite different and the importance of different technical choices is diverse in the improvement of efficiency on energy saving and emission reduction. Policymakers could focus on the elasticity of different technical progress choices in various industries to improve energy and emission reduction efficiency.     

The dynamics of food insecurity and overall health: evidence from the Canadian National Population Health Survey

The paper explores whether the responses to household food insecurity questions in cycles two and three of the Canadian National Population Health Survey help explain the links between socioeconomic status and health at the individual level. Short-term transitions in food insecurity status are correlated with changes in health status. There is some evidence for females but not for males that conditional on current health, current household food insecurity can lead to lower future health status, even in the short run. There is stronger evidence for both males and females that conditional on current household food insecurity status, lower current health status can lead to an increased probability of future household food insecurity.     

Foreign patent rights and high-tech exports: evidence from Taiwan

This paper conducts a consecutive pooled data analysis from 1989 to 2000 to investigate the relationship between foreign patent rights (FPRs) and the exports of three high-tech industries in Taiwan: the semiconductor, the information and the communication equipment industries. Following Smith's model setup, empirical results indicate that both market expansion and market power effects do exist in Taiwan's case. In addition, this paper proposes a new hypothesis in which the importing country may exhibit a stronger R&D ability than the exporting country, a case that has not been considered in earlier empirical work. Finally, a test is made to determine if a TRIPS (Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights) agreement has any impact on the FPRs–exports relationship, and no evidence is found of a structural change after the implementation of TRIPS.     

Social Risk in Health Insurance: A Reflection on the Economies of Scale and Scope in Health Insurance

Social risk causes distortion in the health insurance market. In the presence of social risk, health insurance must be inflated with a safety loading. This implies that policyholder will choose incomplete risk transformation and that health insurers have to build up large capital reserves. By using cross-diversification and enlarging the insurance pool with other kinds of risk (utilising economies of scope in addition to scale production), the problem of social risk will reduce. It is shown how this is possible by using the capital market as a diversification pool     

Revisiting the redistribution effects of intergovernmental fiscal transfers: evidence from Taiwan

This paper employs a panel of 23 local governments in Taiwan over 1998–2010 to re-estimate the redistribution effects of intergovernmental fiscal transfers by considering a self-financing resources of local government as the transition variable in panel smooth transition regression models. Empirical results show that the income (or tax revenues) redistribution effects of fiscal transfer policies are nonlinear and vary with time and across local governments. The grants from central government can improve income and tax revenues distribution of local governments; however, the centrally allotted tax revenues have inverse effects and the total fiscal transfers have ambiguous effects. The total fiscal transfer is a proper policy instrument for improving income redistribution, and the grants for improving tax revenues redistribution. However, high self-financing resources ratios are harmful for these redistribution effects.