Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

4934

Date

2017

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Business Administration

Concentration

Economics

Committee Chair

Albert Okunade

Committee Member

Cyril Chang

Committee Member

Andrew Hussey

Committee Member

Ebenezer George

Abstract

My dissertation comprises three essays in which I apply methods based in economics to policy-relevant questions in health care economics. The essays in the successive chapters study the determinants of prescription drug utilization using U.S. county level data; relationship between household health and socioeconomic factors; and impact of treatment adherence on health capital stock in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in the US. The first essay uses county level data to study the impact of habit formation in an econometric study of determinants of US prescription drug utilization. Results suggest that habit formation is the most important driver of current prescription use. The second essay is an econometric study of the socioeconomic determinants of child health in Nigeria using household level data partitioned into rich and poor wealth groups. I find positive and statistically significant effects of maternal education on child health in the short and long runs in rich and poor groups of households. The third essay studies the relationship between treatment adherence (smoking cessation and annual influenza vaccination) and health stock in COPD by analyzing data of individuals with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in the US. I model the decision to invest in personal care as a two-stage process using the double hurdle model. Results suggest that relative to non-adherence, full adherence increases the probability of an effect on the health stock and conditional on having an effect, increases the capital stock of health.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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