Does health innovation relieve disease burden? The comprehensive evidence

Abstract

Increasing healthcare costs and aging demographics have attracted widespread attention from around the world. This research thus utilizes two measurements of proportion of R&D expenditure on health to GDP and health researchers per million inhabitants for 70 countries spanning 2001–2016 by panel fixed effects model. We incorporate GDP, education, corruption, pollution, urbanization, unemployment and current health expenditure as control variables to investigate the impacts of health innovation on disease burden. The conclusion illustrates that the health innovation could generate a relieved and non-linear lagged impact on disease burden. Next, we provide the differentiated evidence of health innovation inputs on disease burden from life cycle perspective. Furthermore, we carry out sub-samples of the Red Cross, religious and high welfare to examine the heterogeneity of utility of health innovation inputs on disease burden. Additionally, the evidence proves that right-wing parties and efficient governments tend to use health innovation resources effectively. Overall, alternative beneficial implications are offered in accordance with our results.