Three Essays on Health Economics Applications of Panel Data Models

This thesis applies advanced panel data methodologies to the analysis of three health economic problems: clinical and non-clinical factors and cross hospital comparison for elective surgery waiting times in Victorian public hospitals, the determinants of health care expenditure and trend analysis of OECD countries, and socio-economic factors and common trends of suicide rates in OECD countries. Novel modelling features such as non-parametric techniques, factor structure, heterogeneous effects, endogeneity and cross sectional dependence are shown to have significant impacts on key results for policy relevant questions in these three research areas.