International accreditation, linguistic proximity and trade in health services
Trade in health services grew rapidly after the inception of General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in 1995. However, still little is known about the determinants of health service trade from an empirical standpoint. This study attempts to better understand whether trade in health services has been hampered by uncertainty in care quality and language barrier. Specifically, we employed an augmented gravity model on data from UN Service Trade Statistics, World Development Indicators, CEPII database, OECD Health Statistics and other sources to examine whether international accreditation (as a way to signal care quality) and linguistic proximity affect two modes of trade in health services. We found that international accreditation and linguistic have a small but significant marginal effect on the cross-border delivery of health services. However, these factors seem to have little or no effect on the consumption of health services abroad
Chung-Ping A Loh
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