The Regional Impact of Health Care Expenditure: the Case of Italy

Decentralisation invests the sub-central authorities of a country with autonomy in political and economic power the exercise of which may widen interregional divergence and inequality. This paper provides evidence demonstrating that in the case of Italy the central government's policies for rationalisation and containment of the growth of health care expenditure in combination with decentralisation in the administration and provision of health care have resulted in interregional inequality, aggravating the existing regional divergence.