Ruhm Meets GHH

Abstract

This paper …rst documents several important business cycle properties of health status and health expenditures in the US. We …nd that health expenditures are pro-cyclical while health status is counter-cyclical. We then develop a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous health accumulation. The model has four distinct features: 1) Both medical expenditures and leisure time are used to produce health stock; 2) Health enters into production function; 3) Depreciation rate of health stock negatively depends on working hours; 4) Health enters into utility function. We calibrate the model to US economy. The results show that the model can jointly rationalize the counter-cyclicality of health status and pro-cyclicality of medical expenditure. We also investigate the relative importance of each feature in a¤ecting th