David Han-Min Wang

Examining the heterogeneous effect of healthcare expenditure determinants

To shed light on the issue of the black box of healthcare expenditure growth determinants, this study performs quantile regression analysis on examining the heterogeneous effect of healthcare expenditure determinants in Taiwan and the OECD countries. A total of 25 countries are studied over a period from 1992 to 2007. The results show that income, elderly populations, and number of physicians have significant positive effects on long-term healthcare expenditures. The income elasticity of healthcare expenditure lies between 1.20 and 1.47, which indicates that healthcare is a luxury good. And, income elasticity increases in higher quantiles of healthcare expenditures. However, the effects of elderly populations and number of physicians are decreasing towards the higher quantiles of healthcare expenditures.

The role of interest rate in investment decisions: a fuzzy logic framework

This paper examines the role of the interest rate in investment decisions for firms in Taiwan. To reflect the human side of decision making and the uncertain nature of information provided, we employ fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic to examine the nonlinear relationship between these two factors. The results reveal the fact that the interest rate plays an important role in investment decisions. The fuzzy logic theory, replacing the complication model, can explain how the optimisation investment behaviour can be reached.

A cluster analysis and time series approach to examine the healthcare expenditure convergence among Taiwan and the OECD countries

The Healthcare Expenditure (HCE) in Taiwan and the OECD countries have significantly increased over the recent years. To shed light on the issue of the upward trend of HCEs, this paper performs convergence tests and cluster analysis on HCEs in Taiwan and the OECD countries. The results support the overall and pairwise conditional convergence hypotheses. The cluster analysis shows that most countries are converging towards three different health system models.

A Fuzzy Logic Approach to Modeling Brand Value: Evidence from Taiwan’s Banking Industry

With the growing recognition that brands are valuable assets to organizations, the measurement of brand equity has thus been of interest to the academic and practice communities. Various approaches to measuring brand value have developed but are not yet universally accepted. To capture the qualitative characteristics of brands, this paper attempts to apply fuzzy logic analysis to model the brand values of Taiwan’s banking industry. And, we adopt the Hirose model to examine the effectiveness of the fuzzy logic approach in the context of brand valuation. Our findings show that the fuzzy logic and the Hirose models present similar trends in relation to brand estimation. The evidence provided by this paper would enrich our understanding of the brand valuation methodology.

Convergence analysis of the sources of healthcare funding: an empirical analysis

The healthcare expenditures in Taiwan and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries have significantly increased over recent years. The governments of these countries are facing a funding crisis in healthcare. Their healthcare systems have also come under increasing financial pressure as healthcare demand rises. To shed light on the issue of healthcare funding, this paper performs cluster analysis and a convergence test on the sources of healthcare funding for Taiwan and the OECD countries. The empirical results find that some countries with similar healthcare systems in accordance with sources of healthcare funding are converging together as their principal sources of healthcare funding display convergence trends.