In his 2008 Journal of Health Economics paper, Jochen Hartwig claimed that Baumol’s Cost Disease (BCD) theory could explain observed increases in health care expenditures in OECD countries. This paper replicates Hartwig’s results and demonstrates that he tested the wrong hypothesis. When one...

The growing importance of services has led to significant structural change in advancedeconomies, with the service sector now accounting for the largest share of employment indeveloped countries. In his seminal model of the so-called cost disease of services, WilliamBaumol noted that the prices...