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Is American Pet Health Care (Also) Uniquely Inefficient?

Liran Einav¹; Amy Finkelstein²; Atul Gupta³

¹ Department of Economics, Stanford University, 579 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, and NBER (e-mail: ) · ² Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142, and NBER (e-mail: ) · ³ Department of Economics, Stanford University, 579 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305 (e-mail: ).

We document four similarities between American human healthcare and American pet care: (i) rapid growth in spending as a share of GDP over the last two decades; (ii) strong income-spending gradient; (iii) rapid growth in the employment of healthcare providers; and (iv) similar propensity for high spending at the end of life. We speculate about possible implications of these similar patterns in two sectors that share many common features but differ markedly in institutional features, such as the prevalence of insurance and of public sector involvement.

DOI

10.1257/aer.p20171087

Volume

107 (5)

Pages

491-495

Language

en

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