Empirical evidence shows that both leisure and medical care are important in maintaining health and taxation may affect the allocation of these two inputs. We highlight this point using an analytical setting whose implications conform to micro- and macro-data. We then quantify these implications using a life-cycle overlapping generations model where taxation and relative health-care price are key determinants of the composition of the two inputs in the endogenous accumulation of health capital. We find that differences in taxation alone explain 44.7% of U.S.–EU differences in health expenditure–GDP ratio and more than 70% of their differences in time allocation.

中文翻译：

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为什么美国人在医疗保健上的花费比欧洲人多得多？

经验证据表明，休闲和医疗对于维持健康都很重要，税收可能会影响这两种投入的分配。我们使用其含义符合微观和宏观数据的分析环境来强调这一点。然后，我们使用生命周期重叠世代模型量化这些影响，其中税收和相对医疗保健价格是医疗资本内生积累中两种投入构成的关键决定因素。我们发现，仅税收差异就可以解释 44.7% 的美国和欧盟卫生支出与 GDP 比率差异以及超过 70% 的时间分配差异。