Preety Pratima Srivastava

Does Disaggregation Affect the Relationship Between Health Care Expenditure and GDP? An Analysis Using Regime Shifts

This paper investigates the impact of policy shifts on disaggregated health expenditure-GDP relationship in Australia. In contrast to previous studies the disaggregation is at the level of type of service delivered and not at the level of source of expenditure. Our results show that the subcomponents of health expenditure exhibit different patterns of behaviour at both cointegration and unit root stages once policy shifts or structural breaks are allowed in the empirical analysis. When the possibility of structural break is allowed we find a significant long-run relationship between subcomponents of aggregate health expenditure and GDP that is not observed when break is not allowed. The underlying reasons for the occurrence of breaks and policy lessons are discussed subsequently.

Oral Health, Dental Insurance and Dental Service use in Australia.

This study uses data from the 2004-2006 Australian National Survey of Adult Oral Health and a simultaneous equation framework to investigate the interrelationships between dental health, private dental insurance and the use of dental services. The results show that insurance participation is influenced by social and demographic factors, health and health behaviours. In turn, these factors affect the use of dental services, both directly and through insurance participation. Our findings confirm that affordability is a major barrier to visiting the dentist for oral health maintenance and treatment. Our results suggest that having supplementary insurance is associated with some 56 percentage points higher probability of seeing the dentist in the general population. For those who did not have private insurance cover, we predict that conditional on them facing the same insurance conditions, on average, having insurance would increase their visits to the dentist by 43 percentage points. The uninsured in the survey have lower income, worse oral health and lower rates of preventive and treatment visits. Copyright

Does Bingeing Affect Earnings

Both anecdotal and empirical lines of evidence have pointed out that frequent binge drinking has far more serious consequences than occasional bingeing. As a result, a lower penalty for heavy drinking will be estimated by combining the heavy bingers with individuals who binge on rare occasions and are not necessarily less productive. This article explores the drinking–earnings relationship based on a finer distinction between frequent and occasional bingeing, and an extension to female subjects. It finds that frequent bingers experience reduced earnings whereas non-bingers and occasional bingers earn a positive premium over abstainers.

Intergenerational analysis of the donating behavior of parents and their offspring

Using data drawn from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we explore the relationship between the donating behavior of parents and that of their children aged less than 18 which gives a direct insight into whether an intergenerational relationship in donating behavior exists. Furthermore, we exploit information relating to whether or not parents encourage their children to donate to charity by talking to them about donating to unveil information related to the intergenerational transmission of philanthropic behavior. Our findings suggest that an intergenerational correlation is only present in the absence of a control for whether the parent talks to the child about donating. The effect from the parent talking to their offspring is associated with an increased likelihood that the child donates by approximately 10 percentage points, a finding which is robust to a number of different estimation strategies.

Misreporting and econometric modelling of zeros in survey data on social bads: An application to cannabis consumption

Abstract When modelling “social bads,” such as illegal drug consumption, researchers are often faced with a dependent variable characterised by a large number of zero observations. Building on the recent literature on hurdle and double‐hurdle models, we propose a double‐inflated modelling framework, where the zero observations are allowed to come from the following: nonparticipants; participant misreporters (who have larger loss functions associated with a truthful response); and infrequent consumers. Due to our empirical application, the model is derived for the case of an ordered discrete‐dependent variable. However, it is similarly possible to augment other such zero‐inflated models (e.g., zero‐inflated count models, and double‐hurdle models for continuous variables). The model is then applied to a consumer choice problem of cannabis consumption. We estimate that 17% of the reported zeros in the cannabis survey are from individuals who misreport their participation, 11% from infrequent users, and only 72% from true nonparticipants.

Binge Drinking, Antisocial and Unlawful Behaviours, and Beverage Types

This paper examines evidence from Australia on the factors associated with binge drinking and several alcohol-related antisocial and unlawful behaviours. In particular, to quantify the negative externalities of excessive alcohol consumption by product type, our primary focus is the link with eleven types of alcoholic beverages. We also examine the role of binge drinking in increasing the likelihood for engaging in these antisocial and unlawful behaviours. We use individual-level data from a national representative survey and a multivariate probit model that allows unobservable factors for all negative behaviours to be correlated. Potential misclassification in the self-reported consumption data is accounted for. Results provide valuable evidence for more effective alcohol taxation as a tool for correcting differentiated negative externalities by beverage type.