Investigating the relationship between health and non-oil economic growth: Empirical evidence from Iran

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between health and non-oil real GDP throughincluding exports, imports, gross fixed capital formation, government consumption and inflationrate, for Iran using Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) for the period 1998:1 to 2012:4.We model this relationship within the production function framework, and the empirical resultssuggest that total health expenditures (as percentage of GDP) have been positively andsignificantly effect on Iranian non-oil real GDP during the period of study. In addition, accordingto the theories and previous empirical studies, other known variables in economic growth modelssuch as gross fixed capital formation and foreign trade like exports and imports have also had asignificantly positive effect on non-oil real GDP. However, inflation and governmentconsumption have a negative and statistically significant effect on Iranian non-oil real GDP.

Keywords:

Health , Non-oil economic growth , Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS)