Strategic interaction and the determinants of public health expenditures in China: a spatial panel perspective

This paper examines determinants of expenditures on public health in China using a panel of 31 Chinese provinces covering the period 1997–2008. In particular, we propose a spatial Durbin panel model with spatial and time-period fixed effects to test whether China’s provinces incorporate the neighbor’s health spending behavior into their own decision making. We mainly find that a provincial government appears to decrease its own health spending as a response to the rise of health spending of its neighboring provinces, supportive of the expenditure externality hypothesis. Important policy implications are drawn. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2013