A recent strand of the health literature claims that, for a healthier population, governments in high-income countries such as Canada should shift expenditure from health care to the provision of social services. Authors in this literature make this recommendation based on the finding that in standard static constant-parameter health models, the ratio of social services to health care spending is systematically associated with higher life expectancy and lower mortality across the OECD countries. We evaluate the robustness of this important claim to (i) likely time-variation in the model parameters (ii) delayed effects of health determinants and (iii) to disaggregation of health care spending into its major components. Methods: We conduct a longitudinal study of the comparative empirical performances of four time-varying parameter, dynamic and disaggregated health-indicator models relative to the benchmark models typically estimated in the literature, using a Canadian national dataset. Results: We find evidence that spending on social services may indeed increase life expectancy and lower mortality more than spending on health care; but this finding emerges only in dynamic models that allow for time variation in the coefficients. Disaggregation generally shows that hospital care lowers mortality by more than all other categories of spending, including social services.

With the financial crisis in 2008 and its negative consequence on traditional foreign trade and economic growth, China has adopted cross-border e-commerce as a new international business model. The purpose was to enhance international trade and sustain economic growth. However, despite the remarkable increase of cross-border e-commerce, China’s traditional international trade and economic growth have continued to grow slowly. This paper used the ARDL bounds test over the period 2005-2020 to examine the effect of China’s cross-border e-commerce on international trade and economic growth. The findings from our research indicate that in both the short-run and long-run, cross-border e-commerce has positively impacted international trade and economic growth in China. Therefore, in order to promote trade and economic growth, the government should continue to support the development of cross-border e-commerce.