EVALUATION of HEALTH INDICATORS of OECD COUNTRIES by STOCHASTIC FRONTIER ANALYSIS

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to determine the factors affecting the change of health expenditures in OECD countries and revealing their effect levels. Methodology: Within the scope of the study, the effects of health status indicators on health expenditure per capita were investigated by using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) method with 2016 data obtained from OECD health statistics. Findings: The extent to which health status indicators affect the change in health expenditures was tried to be calculated with the Least-Squares and Maximum Likelihood methods of the SFA. According to the estimation results, we observed that inefficiency reason in all analyses was due to a 99,99 % of random error. It was found in the analysis that there was a positive relationship between health expenditure per capita, life expectancy at birth, and the number of nurses per thousand people, and a negative relationship between infant mortality. Originality: This study demonstrates the factors that have an impact on the health-care costs included in the health indicators, as well as the inter-relationship between such health indicators within the OECD countries. It is considered that familiarity with the inter-relationships among health indicators will be of great assistance to health-policymakers and will contribute to the body literature in the context of much more efficient plan preparation.