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Les dépenses de santé, qui constituent la plus grande partie des dépenses des gouvernements provinciaux, se sont accrues considérablement au cours de la dernière décennie. L'on a soutenu que l'augmentation des dépenses de santé a conduit les gouvernements à réduire les dépenses destinées à d'autres types de services gouvernementaux. En utilisant une série de données, au niveau provincial, pour la période allant de 1998/89 à 2003/04, notre étude a pu tester l'hypothèse que les dépenses de santé ont fait obstacle à d'autres types de dépenses. Les résultats indiquent que, pour la période étudiée, il n'y a aucune preuve que l'accroissement des dépenses de santé des gouvernements provinciaux ait fait baisser le niveau des dépenses destinées à d'autres catégories de produits et services fournis par les gouvernements. Health spending, the largest component of provincial government spending, has risen significantly over the past decade. It has been asserted that larger health expenditures have caused provincial governments to spend less on other types of government services. Using a panel of province-level data for the period 1988/ 89 to 2003/04, this study provides a test of the hypothesis that health spending has crowded out other types of spending. The results indicate that, for the period studied, there is no evidence that increased provincial government health expenditures resulted in lower levels of spending on other categories of government provided goods and services.

Although the theoretical literature on firm reputation is well developed, few empirical studies exist that quantify the importance of reputation effects. This paper estimates the impact on price of current product quality and reputation using data from the market for Bordeaux wine. A model is proposed in which price is a function of current quality and expected quality, where the latter depends on reputation. Equations determining price and expected quality are estimated jointly. The empirical findings show that the price premium associated with a better reputation far exceeds that associated with improvements in current quality. The impact of reputation on price is disaggregated into individual firm and collective (or group) reputation effects, and the significance and magnitude of these effects are compared. The results indicate that both types of reputation are important, and that in general, the market values collective reputation indicators only to the extent that they are useful predictors of product quality.