Whatever factors are pushing up health care costs forAmerican humans seem to extend to their four-leggedfriends.

Related: Report shows health care costs stillrising

New research looks at pet and human health spending,and find that preference – not just regulatory and structuralissues – could be helping to push up U.S. health carecosts.

This week's research wrap also takes a look at populationaging's implications for wage growth and globalization's inflationeffects. Check out this roundup every week for blurbs on,and links to, interesting or influential economic researchfrom around the world.

Your pet's doctor visit is inefficient, too

Healthcare spending on pets has been growing strongly, and itoffers some insight into what's happening in the U.S. human healthsystem, Stanford University's Liran Einav and Atul Gupta andMassachusetts Institute of Technology's Amy Finkelstein write.

Related: Millennials, pet insurance, and theclassics

They find that many features of the pet health care sector are"remarkably similar" to those of the human industry. Both have seenrapid growth as a share of GDP over the last two decades and highend-of-life spending, for instance.

This is true despite the fact that insurance and regulationare both less prevalent in the pet-healthcare world, and so"it should give us pause before attributing the large and risinghealthcare costs in the U.S. solely to the prevalence of insuranceand government involvement," the authors write.

Population aging: a culprit behind slower U.S. wagegrowth

Wage growth rises early in a worker's career before flatteningout between the ages of about 41 and 54 and declining in the run-upto retirement, a New York Fed analysis shows.

Related: Americans spending less on other things because ofhealth costs

This has big implications as the U.S. workforce ages: thefraction of the population in the fast-wage growth phase hasdeclined from close to 60 percent in the 1980s to the mid-40percent range recently, while a greater share of thepopulation has entered its declining-wage-growthphase. More to come on this Wednesday, when the researchersrelease a follow-up post.

Chinese consumer spending is looking good

Chinese consumption has recently picked up, and its growthtrajectory going forward hinges on whether that'ssustainable. Economists at the Kansas City Federal Reserve seereason to hope.

They expect that consumption growth in China willremain at around 9 percent per year over the next fiveyears, causing the share of Chinese consumption in GDP toincrease by about 5 percentage points to 44 percent by2020.

Stable household income growth and a decline in the householdsaving rate should drive the trend, partly due to an increasein young people dependent on working households after the removalof the country's one-child policy. Still, they warn that adecline in the household saving rate can't last forever –China is going to have to make supply-side reforms in the longerrun.

Globalization may be holding down U.K. inflation

Globalization has created an additional source ofslack that holds down inflation in the U.K., regionalagents from the Bank of England conclude in a new blogpost, making its trajectory important for the monetary policyoutlook. For instance, more open product markets make it harder forU.K. companies to raise prices, since consumers will find externalsubstitutes.

Likewise, more open labor markets reduce the need for wagehikes, since employers can outsource or recruit immigrants.

The thing is, the outlook for those forces is uncertain in lightof Britain's June vote to leave the European Union. Brexit "mightaffect the future flow, and composition, of net migration, as wellas the import share of spending volumes and the attractiveness andease of outsourcing," the authors write.

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