The growth of public health expenditures in OECD countries: do government ideology and electoral motives matter

This paper examines how policy affects public health expenditures. Analyzing an OECD panel in the period from 1970 to 2004, four political variables are tested: Election years, the ideological party composition of governments, the number of coalition partners and if the ruling government has a majority in parliament. An electoral cycle is detected to be spurious and driven by endogenous election years. Interestingly, the impact of the governments ’ ideological orientation depends on the time interval considered. Left governments increased spending fro