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. 2025 Mar;26(2):233-241.
doi: 10.1007/s10198-024-01700-3. Epub 2024 Jun 6.

Does medial tourism promote growth in healthcare sector?

Hassan F Gholipour  1 , Kourosh Esfandiar  2
Affiliations

Does medial tourism promote growth in healthcare sector?

Hassan F Gholipour et al. Eur J Health Econ. 2025 Mar.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of medical tourism revenues on the growth of healthcare sector across 49 emerging and developed economies from 2008 to 2022. Using panel GMM and PMG/ARDL estimation methods, the results show that higher levels of medical tourism revenues promote growth in the healthcare sector. This finding remains robust across different sample periods, alternative measure of healthcare sector performance, and model specifications.

Keywords: Economic growth; Healthcare sector; Medical tourism; Panel data; Tourism revenue.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. Ethical approval: This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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