Seminar: Geographic Variation in Healthcare Expenditure in the Netherlands: Evidence from Movers

We assess the relative importance of demand and supply as determinants of geographic variation in healthcare expenditure in the Netherlands. Our empirical approach uses people who migrate within the country. Following people over time allows to control for individual unobserved characteristics. We use data on annual healthcare expenditure per category of care for the entire Dutch population between 2006 and 2013, resulting in over 100 million observations. Our results show that geographic variation in healthcare expenditure is mostly driven by patients, with an estimated share around 0.7. There is little evidence of heterogeneity across categories of care.