EXCHANGE RATE DYNAMICS AND HEALTH EXPENDITURE PER CAPITA ACROSS ECONOMIES ENGAGED IN INTERNATIONAL IMPORT TRADE

This analysis examines whether exchange rate dynamics exhibit distinct associations with health expenditure across importing economies, informing international debates on financing pressures. World Development Indicators provide 1,995 annual observations across 185 economies during 2013 to 2023. An exploratory panel model jointly estimates contemporaneous depreciation, preceding depreciation and rolling volatility, incorporating economy and year fixed effects with standard errors clustered by economy. A ten-percentage log point increase in contemporaneous depreciation is associated with 1.39% lower expenditure, with a 95% confidence interval indicating reductions between 0.44% and 2.32%. Preceding depreciation is imprecisely estimated, while the negative volatility association weakens after adjustment for multiple comparisons. Adding observations from 2024 changes estimates little, and excluding individual economies preserves coefficient directions. However, expenditure level specifications provide weaker evidence. These findings refine uniform transmission accounts by distinguishing timing, variability and measurement scale without identifying causal mechanisms. International expenditure surveillance should therefore assess proportional and absolute spending together and avoid interpreting currency associations as direct evidence of changes in service availability.