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Aims: To examine the current status of care and needs of adult congenital heart disease (ACHD) services in the Central and South Eastern European (CESEE) region. Methods and results: We obtained data regarding the national ACHD status for 19 CESEE countries from their ACHD representative based on an extensive survey for 2017 and/or 2018. Thirteen countries reported at least one tertiary ACHD centre with a median year of centre establishment in 2007 (interquartile range 2002–2013). ACHD centres reported a median of 2114 patients under active follow‐up with an annual cardiac catheter and surgical intervention volume of 49 and 40, respectively. The majority (90%) of catheter or surgical interventions were funded by government reimbursement schemes. However, all 19 countries had financial caps on a hospital level, leading to patient waiting lists and restrictions in the number of procedures that can be performed. The median number of ACHD specialists per country was 3. The majority of centres (75%) did not have ACHD specialist nurses. The six countries with no dedicated ACHD centres had lower Gross Domestic Product per capita compared to the remainder (P = 0.005). Conclusion: The majority of countries in CESEE now have established ACHD services with adequate infrastructure and a patient workload comparable to the rest of Europe, but important gaps still exist. ACHD care is challenged or compromised by limited financial resources, insufficient staffing levels, and reimbursement caps on essential procedures compared to Western Europe. Active advocacy and increased resources are required to address the inequalities of care across the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No abstract is available for this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of the political hierarchies of cities in China from different perspectives. First, we examine the economic disparities between prefectural cities and municipalities. Furthermore, this paper draws upon a quasi‐ experiment to analyze the impact of upgrading Chongqing to a municipality in 1997 using the synthetic control method. The city‐upgrading policy significantly increased Chongqing's gross domestic product (GDP) in the following 4 years. Finally, we find that the policy increased GDP in treated cities within 1200 km of Chongqing by about 10%–13% relative to the control cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT There have been very few studies done on measuring the influence of all prefecture‐level cities on a national scale due to the limited availability of public data, challenges in data collection, and insufficient data comprehensiveness. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by investigating this problem in China. We first collected 692,859 news articles spanning one full year from the WeChat Official Accounts of 339 cities and Taiwan Province, which served as our study area and dataset. Then, we developed a city extractor module to reduce the ambiguity of place names and constructed a city interaction network. Then, we modeled the City Influence Index (CII) and the intensity of its influence. Finally, we proposed an analytical framework that examines the relationship between CII and Gross Domestic Product (GDP), compares it with the Global Cities Index, conducts influence analysis of cities at different levels, and more. The experimental results demonstrate that our analytical framework can effectively measure the influence of cities on a national scale and uncover the implicit relationships between cities. In doing so, our study offers a new perspective for measuring city influence. Code is available at: https://github.com/vczero/CII. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explores the effects of data transparency on economic growth for developing economies over a unique time period ‐ at the onset of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis and thereafter. Data transparency is defined as the timely production of credible statistics as measured by the statistical capacity indicator. The paper finds that data transparency has a positive effect on real gross domestic product per capita during a period of considerable uncertainty. The estimates indicate an elasticity of the magnitude of 0.03 percent per year, which is much larger than the elasticity of trade openness and schooling in the estimation sample. The empirics employ a variety of econometric estimators, including dynamic panel and cross‐sectional instrumental variables estimators, with the latter approach yielding a higher estimated elasticity. The findings are robust to the inclusion of several factors in addition to political institutions and exogenous commodity‐price and external debt‐financing shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy, being one of the significant drivers of growth, has gained much focus in the last four decades. A connection between energy and growth exists in the economy: on the one hand, energy is a vital factor of production while growth improves living standards, which increases energy consumption on the other hand. Previous studies on the energy‐growth nexus paid less attention to sectorial differentials in the consumption of energy and growth. Also, the literature could not relate that to sustainable development. Thus, this study explores the sectorial differentials in energy consumption and how they affect the energy‐growth nexus within the context of sustainable development. The research employed secondary data for 46 sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) countries for the period 2007 to 2020. Using the General Methods of Moments estimation technique, we found that all the measures of energy consumption positively affect economic growth. Also, CO2 intensity is positively related to growth in the economy while CO2 emissions from solid fuels negatively affect economic growth. Again, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is positively impacting economic growth and Gross Domestic Product (SSA) per energy use. Policy implications are discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses multilevel analysis of 24 European countries to examine the effects of macroeconomic variables (GDP and unemployment) and welfare state interventions (active and passive labour market policies) on job insecurity and job quality in Europe from the mid‐1990s until the last 2021 COVID crisis. The paper makes a distinction between the crisis of the welfare state and the reaction of welfare states to crises and connects the job quality literature with that on the transformation of the welfare state. The article introduces several innovations to the literature by looking at the impact of welfare state interventions on multidimensional job quality, distinguishing between different types of active labour market policy spending and considering the generosity of benefits. The findings show that active labour market policies (ALMPs) and passive labour market policies (PLMPs) have a positive effect in reducing job insecurity across skill groups. ALMPs and PLMPs also improved several dimensions of job quality, but mostly among manual/low‐skilled workers, while they have a negative effect on work pressure which mostly affects medium‐ and high‐skilled workers. The article concludes by discussing how, due to the reach of ALMP and PLMP interventions, the positive effects of the welfare state on job quality are concentrated among lower‐skilled workers, thereby limiting the ambition of contemporary welfare states to generate positive spillover effects on the quality of work for all workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of the main criterion employed by the European Commission for the allocation of the largest portion of Structural Funds, based on the threshold of the 75% of European Union (EU) average gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. We focus on the 2014–2020 programming period and on EU‐15 regions to analyze if this criterion has penalized some of them, as a consequence of the 2004 EU enlargement, which has represented an exogenous shock in the allocation process, due to the economic backwardness of new member states. Through the application of Synthetic Control Methods and Difference‐in‐Differences estimators at different geographical scales, we show that regions that did not obtain the less developed status in both the programming period 2007–2013 and 2014–2020, but that would have obtained it in the period 2014–2020 without the 2004 EU enlargement, experienced a significantly lower GDP per capita growth between −10.5% and −5.7%. Conversely, territories that in the period 2014–2020 lost the less developed status, previously obtained in the time frame 2007–2013, were not characterized by a significantly lower economic growth, providing some evidence of the effectiveness of the safety net. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the European devaluation of maternal and female domestic labor after the Industrial Revolution as a defensive byproduct of collective male annihilation anxiety due to the replacement of male manual labor by machines. We argue that an abject attitude towards women was codified in law, economic policy and social norms that still exist today, contributing to an ongoing, unconscious, structural degradation of female caregiving. We also suggest this stance towards female labor was exported to post‐colonial nations through the global adoption of the gross domestic product statistic, which excludes domestic and maternal labor from national accounting measurements. We draw on Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection, research from the fields of economics and policy analysis—and the burgeoning subfield of narrative economics—to suggest a reparative path forward for both men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the applicability of DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) to measure and evaluate the efficiency of materials management at the regional level. The research has been conducted for Polish regions as a case study. The basis for the calculation of the efficiency scores was a statistically selected set of materials used in a given region and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The results of the analysis reveal that 4 (Łódzkie, Śląskie, Warmińsko‐Mazurskie, and Zachodniopomorskie) out of 16 Polish regions are relatively efficient. The remaining regions consume too many material resources in the process of generating goods and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many academic papers have looked at the economic effects of the EU cohesion policy, which still remain an open empirical issue. The focus of the most recent literature has been on the heterogeneous effects of the policy and the identification of regional conditioning factors. However, most of the existing studies generally assume slope homogeneity for different cross‐sectional units (i.e., regions) and they estimate the average effects of the policy for all the European regions and/or selected groups of regions. Past works also employ data covering few programming periods. This paper has two main goals. First, we study the heterogeneous consequences of EU cohesion policy on regional economic growth in Europe over the past three decades, by applying a heterogeneous coefficient approach to new panel‐time series data. We calculate the region‐specific effects of the policy in terms of long‐run gross domestic product growth. Second, we study regional differences in terms of policy effects depending on the level of assistance received by the regions. We make a distinction among cases of effective, ineffective, trigger and marginal policy. We also document that the effectiveness of EU cohesion policy in the long run can be explained by some of the key factors used in the literature. Finally, we discuss the need for ineffective cases to learn from effective and trigger ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at estimating the regional and sectoral impacts of the Covid‐19 pandemic in the state of Sergipe, Brazil in 2020. We use an input‐output model with partial hypothetical extraction. The main results suggest a significant reduction in economic activity in the state, particularly in the Transport and Industry sectors. On the other hand, the Real estate and Food and Accommodation sectors have a greater capacity for recovery with the introduction of an emergency aid program. The municipalities with the largest absolute impact on gross domestic product are Aracaju, Canindé de São Francisco and Nossa Senhora do Socorro, two of them located in the metropolitan area of Aracaju. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the heterogeneous patterns of clean energy consumption at business cycle frequencies from 1970 to 2017. Specifically, the paper provides a systematic analysis of this relationship in a comprehensive cross‐country panel by extracting the cyclical components of the clean energy consumption and gross domestic product (GDP) series based on the Hodrick–Prescott filter. Focusing on the cyclical components, we conclude the stylised facts as follows: (a) clean energy consumption is procyclical in advanced economies and developing economies, but acyclical in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC); (b) clean energy consumption is cyclically more volatile than GDP in a typical country; (c) the correlation between cyclicality of clean energy consumption and GDP per capita is more intricate in different country groups; and (d) clean energy consumption is positively correlated with the oil price in advanced economies and developing economies, and negatively correlated in OPEC. These stylised facts are potentially important for establishing empirical and theoretical models to exploit the consequences and impacts of clean energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) approach, this paper presents new evidence on the validity of international transmission of economic shocks from key trading partners as sources of macroeconomic fluctuations in sub‐Saharan African (SSA) countries. The GVAR model was estimated for 21 SSA countries grouped into three country classes—oil‐rich, other‐resources‐rich and non‐resource‐based economies, to account for output shocks from crucial trading partner countries—United States, United Kingdom, China and Europe. Furthermore, the generalized forecast error variance decompositions results reveal that output shocks from key trading partners constitute significant contributors to changes in key macroeconomic indicators—real gross domestic product, inflation, exchange rate and short‐term interest rate, in the SSA region. The generalized impulse response functions indicate that these economic shocks have more significant impacts on oil‐rich countries than on other country groups. A key recommendation from this study is that SSA countries, especially the resource‐rich economies, need to strengthen and diversify their economic structure, including the trade basket. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing literature on the causal association between electricity supply and economic growth, little is known about the causal linkage between electricity transmission and distributional losses and economic growth, particularly in Ghana. The paper studies the causal association between electricity transmission, distributional losses and economic growth in Ghana. Further, we interacted ETDL with electricity price to examine their combined impact on Ghana's gross domestic product. We utilised time series data from the period 1971 to 2014. Given that our data span is relatively shorter, we utilised the Toda and Yamamoto and Autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) methods. This is so because these time series approaches can produce efficient, reliable and eliminate spurious regression estimates even if the sample size is relatively short. Our ARDL estimates suggest that ETDL exert an adverse impact on economic growth while the Toda and Yamamoto estimates suggest that economic growth has a strong influence on ETDL and not the other way round, supporting the growth‐led energy hypothesis. Also, the interactive effect of ETDL and electricity prices on economic growth was negative and statistically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides fresh evidence concerning the threshold relationship between the shadow economy and financial development. Shadow economy is quoted as an obstacle to sustainable development and therefore the role of financial development is examined in this paper to tackle the issue of shadow economy. It is based on panel data of 29 developed and developing countries over the period of 1975–2015 and use of panel threshold model. Three proxies for financial development—liquid liabilities, private credit to deposit money banks, and stock market capitalisation—were utilised to obtain the threshold value of US$33,600 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. This threshold helps to determine the impact of financial development on the size of the shadow economy. Empirical results suggest that above this threshold, financial development significantly contributes to the reduction in size of the shadow economy while it has no impact for countries that have per capita income below this threshold. This implies that, countries with lower per capita income (below $33,600) should implement policies to improve accessibility to finance and credit market which leads to a sufficiently higher per capita income that in turn allows for a reduction in the size of the shadow economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the long‐term relationship between regional inequality and economic development. Our data set includes information on national and regional per capita GDP for four countries: France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, compiled on a decadal basis for the period 1860–2010. Using parametric and semiparametric regressions, our results confirm the rise and fall of regional inequalities over time although in recent decades they are on the rise again. Finally, we identify structural change as being a significant transmission mechanism of the inverted‐U relationship. The arrival of technological shocks, beginning during the onset of industrialization, and the transition from agrarian to industrial economies, would explain this result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the differential impact of several territorial determinants of the economic performance of Italian provinces (NUTS 3 level). as measured by per capita GDP, export and employment growth from 1999 to 2014. It covers both the pre‐crisis and the crisis period and stresses the role of geographical proximity in shaping local performance over a wide set of explanatory variables. In order to do so, we employ, firstly, a spatial Durbin model which enables us to discriminate between direct and indirect effects and to highlight the possible contagion or crowding‐out spatial effects for each territorial dimension affecting growth. Then, we extend the analysis by allowing for the possibility of two regimes (pre‐crisis and post‐crisis). The performance of the provinces before and during the crisis relates to specific territorial components and geographic proximity appears to influence differently the results and their interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the importance of good institutions in harnessing the growth effects of the bulging economically active population in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). The paper utilizes a panel dataset comprising 39 countries over the period 2002–13. Based on the system generalized method of moments estimator, this paper finds that an increase in the relative size of the working‐age population has no direct significant impact on growth, except through the presence of strong and high‐quality institutions. The paper also finds that control of corruption, rule of law and political stability are the specific aspects of institutions that matter the most in reaping the dividend. These results do not only highlight the primacy of strong institutions but also shed light on the key institutional pillars that need to be strengthened to rake in the positive effects of an increasing working age population on economic growth in SSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a model in which greater inequality reduces growth in economies with low levels of financial development but that this effect is attenuated in economies with more developed systems. The model also predicts that individuals in economies with developed financial markets have a higher tolerance to inequality. Using a panel dataset that covers a large number of countries, this paper shows empirical evidence that is consistent with the main predictions of the model. Overall, this paper's major findings highlight that some of the pernicious effects of inequality can be attenuated by improving access to credit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Using panel data on 47 African countries from 1980–2013, this paper investigates the effects of aid on Africa's economic growth from the perspective of political stability. We find that international aid can promote economic growth in Africa, but the effectiveness of aid depends on countries’ political stability. Further, the intensity of aid affects its effectiveness. When the aid–GDP ratio is between 0 and 69 per cent, aid can promote economic growth in recipient countries, and when this ratio is 27 per cent, the marginal impact of aid on economic growth is maximized. The findings of this paper suggest that providers of aid should avoid providing a substantial amount of aid to countries at risk of political unrest, and they must determine the optimal scale of aid based on the economic development of recipient countries in order to enable aid to generate better results. Recipient countries should maintain social and political stability and ensure that they do not develop an excessive dependence on aid so that they can achieve the self‐sustainable development of their own economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The paper measures regional GDP growth losses that a smaller market size caused by the reintroduction of legal and administrative barriers would cause. We model augmented barriers in a Keynesian framework, pointing at four effects: a border effect, stronger for regions close to borders; an exposure effect, stronger for regions open to trade; a centrality effect, affecting areas close to the economic core; a demand concentration effect, stronger for regions close to large trading partners. By estimating border effects with data on EU NUTS 3 regions and simulating a general increase in barriers among EU countries, the four regional effects clearly emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) into FDI least recipient regions. Panel data for 20 sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and 11 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries are used for the period 2000-12. Findings of the fixed effects estimations suggest that FDI inflows into these regions are influenced by GDP per capita, infrastructure development, trade openness, and control of corruption. Conversely, inflation negatively affects FDI inflows, and rents from natural resources do not significantly influence FDI. Furthermore, the findings show that marginal benefits from any increase in the quantity of FDI determinants (with the exception of control of corruption) will be less for SSA countries. The paper concludes with important policy implications deduced from the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the growth rate volatility of European regions' per capita GDP from 1992 to 2008. We measure the regional volatility using a new methodology based on Markov matrices, and investigate its main determinants. Volatility displays a geographical pattern and a significant spatial dependence. Output composition appears one of the main drivers of volatility; among the other determinants we find a negative impact of the size of regional economies and of labour market flexibility, and a positive impact of sectoral concentration, financialization of the economy, and, occasionally, of participation in EMU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, the effectiveness of European Cohesion Policy has been evaluated in terms of GDP growth rate. In this paper, we consider the effect of the regional policy in terms of its impacts on two specific fields of intervention, namely 'research, technological development and innovation', and 'transport infrastructure'. Our econometric approach involves the use of a non-parametric regression discontinuity design technique to a uniquely-disaggregated Cohesion Policy dataset broken down according to the specific objectives of each stream of funding. The analysis considers different time intervals and sub-samples. Our results demonstrate a positive impact of Cohesion Policy interventions in these two specific fields of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is lack of standard understanding or definition of the shadow economy. The aim of this mainly theoretical paper is twofold. First it brings together the concepts of the available academic research and official statistics. Second it discusses in what sense the calculated shadow economy measures indicate an exceeding amount over the official Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Indicators usually express shadow economy size as a proportion of GDP, so it is of most importance to elucidate the true meaning of these numbers. Official GDP already includes certain part of the shadow activities. Empirical calculations illustrate the weight of overlap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the long run relationship between public debt and economic growth in India for the period 1980–2018 using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The bounds test results suggest that gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, internal and external public debt, fixed investment and trade openness are cointegrated implying the existence of a long run equilibrium relationship between these variables. We find that both internal and external public debt have significant negative effect on economic growth in the long run whereas, investment has significant positive effect on the growth rate of output per capita. The error‐correction model shows that the long run equilibrium relationship is stable and the adjustment towards equilibrium is relatively high. Our findings suggest that too much reliance on public debt must be discouraged since it has adverse effect on economic growth in the long run. The government should adopt investment‐supportive policies to enhance economic growth of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is overwhelming evidence that human lifestyles have impacted the earth's planetary boundaries, with profound impacts for generations to come. Without concerted action to shape a better future, children will bear the burden on their health and well-being throughout their lifetimes. Yet government priorities are frequently dominated by short-term concerns, and an over-reliance on economic indicators as a measure of human progress. To give today's - and tomorrow's - children the best chance of leading flourishing lives, a new approach is needed, which overcomes the 'presentist' bias in political decision-making and values measures of well-being beyond gross domestic product (GDP). The potential building blocks of such an approach can be seen in the promising early steps being taken by several countries, including Wales and New Zealand. This paper provides an overview of these efforts in the context of the recommendations of the WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission report 'A future for the world's children'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies fiscal policy in a model with nominal gross domestic product (GDP) targeting. We find that, with wage rigidity, nominal GDP targeting generates lower welfare losses than inflation targeting and a Taylor rule. On the other hand, adopting this regime makes standard fiscal policy rules, whereby distortionary tax rates are designed to respond to economic activity, dependent on the behavior of inflation instead. We also find that the fiscal multipliers with nominal GDP targeting are smaller than the multipliers under inflation targeting and the Taylor rule. Therefore, nominal GDP targeting does not necessarily outperform other monetary policy rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on Okun's law and Phillips curve theoretical frameworks to analyse the relationship between macroeconomic aggregates and unemployment in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Fixed and random effects, as well as fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOL) panel data estimation techniques are employed on annual data covering 1991 to 2014. Empirical analyses are performed at both aggregate ECOWAS data level and sub-regional levels, that is, Francophone and Anglophone country levels. Results show that gross domestic product (GDP) growth has a reducing but insignificant effect on unemployment rate, which indicates low employment elasticity of growth in the region. Inflation has an overwhelming positive impact on unemployment, indicating invalidity of the Phillips curve hypothesis. Another important finding of the paper is the positive impact of labour productivity on unemployment rate, reflecting a trade-off between labour productivity and employment. Further, FDI and external debt exert a weak negative impact on unemployment, while population growth has an increasing effect. The paper suggests the need for enabling macroeconomic environment that promotes employment generation in the ECOWAS region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the determinants of regional disparities in per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and their evolution over time in the enlarged European Union (EU). With reference to the literature it groups EU regions on the basis of three different factors-specialisation, socio-economic features, and innovation. It then analyses regional disparities in per capita GDP (EU-relative and country-relative) across groups over 2004-2011 using both non-parametric tools and traditional regression analysis with spatial effects. The paper finds that EU-wide convergence actually conceals growing divergence across old member regions and within new members. Coming to the factors that lie at the heart of regional disparities, country factors lose importance for newcomers but become more important for older members, notwithstanding longstanding integration. Socio-economic factors and innovation instead become increasingly important for all areas, socio-economic factors lying at the heart of within-country differences and innovation more of those between regions. Finally, specialisation appears to have a lower explanatory power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to previous studies on the economic impact of universities that focus on the demand side, this study centres on universities' effects on the supply side of the economy. Through a case study of the Spanish University System, this paper proposes a methodology based on counterfactual scenarios and growth accounting to estimate the long-term impacts of universities on their regional economies. Our study evaluates the stylized impacts of universities' activities on human capital, salaries and occupation of the working age population, on generation of technological capital and, finally, on the GDP growth of the Spanish economy in the period 1989-2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education, general health, and reproductive health are key indicators of human development. Investments in these domains can also promote economic growth. This paper argues for human development–related investments based on (1) a theoretical economic growth model with poverty traps, (2) a literature review of evidence that different human development–related investments can promote growth, and (3) own empirical analyses of 1980–2015 data that aim to estimate the relative contribution of different human development indicators to economic growth across heterogeneous growth regimes. Our results suggest the following associations: (1) a one‐child decrease in the total fertility rate corresponds to a 2 percentage point (pp) increase in annual per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the short run (five years) and 0.5 pp higher annual growth in the mid‐run to long run (35 years), (2) a 10 percent increase in life expectancy at birth corresponds to a 1 pp increase in annual per capita GDP growth in the short run and 0.4 pp higher growth in the mid‐run to long run, and (3) a one‐year increase in average educational attainment corresponds to a 0.7 pp increase in annual growth in the short run and 0.3 pp higher growth in the mid‐run to long run. By contrast, infrastructure proxies are not significantly associated with subsequent growth in any of the models estimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper analyses the impact of the EU funds, for the European region of Azores, as they affect GDP, employment, and the wellbeing of families in different income levels, using a dynamic, multi-sector, computable general equilibrium model ( CGE) - Azor Mod. Simulating the impact of a total cut in transfers and comparing with a base business as usual scenario, it is concluded that the elimination of the EU transfers could cause a sharp permanent fall on public demand and an immediate 2 per cent fall in GDP. The fall in public demand causes a fall in consumer and investment prices which will foster a sharp increase in investment demand that gradually causes GDP to grow back to its initial levels within a ten year period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional wisdom is that growth is a precondition for poverty reduction. Paying particular attention to the level of growth, poverty and institutions in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), this paper investigates the effect of GDP per capita growth and sectoral growth on poverty and explores whether the growth-poverty link can be strengthened by institutions. Using the panel dataset of 41 SSA countries over the period 1981-2010 and dynamic two-step system generalized method of moment (GMM) estimator; it is found that GDP per capita growth is an important instrument for poverty reduction. Also, the growth of agriculture and the service sectors have direct poverty-reducing effects. The paper further reveals that good and accountable government, bureaucratic quality and sound policies and regulations are important ingredients in sustaining the growth-poverty link in SSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzed the factors that drive foreign direct investments (FDI) by looking at regional heterogeneity among the five African regions. For the first time, FDI drivers are analyzed for each of the five regions of Africa contrary to previous studies which focused on Africa as a whole. The paper used a panel dataset from 1970 to 2010 of 53 African countries divided into: Central, East, North, Southern, and West Africa. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and generalized method of moments (GMM) techniques are used for the estimations. The main results indicate that: (i) agglomeration has a strong positive relationship with FDI inflows in all the regions except Central Africa. However, in West Africa, the second lag of FDI is significantly negative; (ii) there is a negative relationship between FDI inflows and GDP per capita in all the five regions, but a U-shaped relationship is observed in Central, North, and West Africa. But GDP growth rate has a strongly positive relationship with FDI inflows in Central Africa but negatively significant in West Africa; (iii) FDI follows domestic investment in East, Southern, and West Africa; (iv) democracy is a major factor in attracting FDI to Southern Africa, being upward concave; (v) infrastructure development has a positive impact on FDI inflows in East and North Africa; (vi) trade openness has a positive relationship with FDI inflows in all the five regions except in East Africa; (vii) inflation deters FDI inflows to East Africa; (viii) the level of urbanization has a strong positive relationship with FDI inflows only in West Africa; (ix) net foreign aid has a negative relationship with FDI inflows to East, North, and Southern Africa; (x) higher life expectancy deters FDI inflows to Central Africa but promotes the same to East and North Africa; (xi) metal production and exportation attract significant FDI to Central Africa while oil production and exportation attract higher FDI to West Africa; (xii) monetary union attracts greater FDI to Central and West Africa; and (xiii) political instability is a strong hindrance to FDI inflows to West Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's transport sector has been growing faster than its GDP, contributing to rising energy demand from the sector. This, coupled with limited domestic production, has led to a rising import dependence of crude oil in particular, which stood at 83.4 per cent in 2013-14. In order to enhance India's energy security and manage demand from the sector, this paper analyses the factors influencing transport activity and the resulting energy demand from the transport sector. The paper also outlines a range of possible scenarios for transport sector demand in India till 2030-31 along with the potential energy use under these scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nonlinear impact of real GDP per capita on financial development in a panel of 125 countries. It also determines the moderating effect of inflation on the impact of GDP on financial development. It employs the dynamic panel system generalized method of moments (GMM) and the dynamic common correlated effects (CCE) to do both panel and country‐specific analysis, as well as control for cross‐sectional dependence, heterogeneity and endogeneity. This study shows that GDP has a positive impact on financial development in the entire panel. However, when we split the panel into different income groups, we find a positive impact in the high‐ and middle‐income groups while the impact is insignificant in the low income group. Although we find no evidence of a nonlinear impact of GDP on financial development in the panel, the country‐specific analysis reveals a significant nonlinear relationship between GDP and financial development in 73 countries. We also show that inflation adversely moderates the positive impact of GDP on financial development in middle‐income countries. This study implies that the relationship between GDP and financial development depends on the levels of GDP and inflation rate. We recommend some policy options based on the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's post‐Cultural‐Revolution reform generated rapid economic growth. But it also brought about major negative changes, especially in the early stage, which jeopardized population health and mortality gains. Nonetheless, improvements continued. China had achieved the Millennium Development Goal target 4 of reducing under‐5 mortality by two‐thirds well before the target year of 2015. Life expectancy continued to rise and reached 76.6 years by 2018, notably higher than the world average and that recorded in many countries with similar per capita GDP. By describing China's recent economic growth, the rebuilding of nationwide health insurance systems, the development of medical financial assistance, and poverty alleviation programs, this paper shows how these improvements were achieved. Vulnerability to health and mortality risks has been reduced; the availability of, and people's access to, health insurance have increased; and better medical treatments and health services have become available and accessible. These macro‐socioeconomic determinants have played the central role in achieving further population health and mortality progress in China in the past four decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the role of foreign direct investment in economic growth by analyzing the contribution of sectoral external finance in Tanzania. Time series data from 1988 to 2017 and 1999 to 2017 for the general and sector‐specific foreign finance respectively is studied using time series econometrics techniques. More specifically, the autoregressive distributive lag bound test for cointegration and error correction model are employed to evaluate the impact of sector foreign direct investment on growth. The diagnostic tests suggest that our models are free from instability, nonnormality, misspecification, heteroscedasticity, and serial correlation. Estimated long‐ and short‐term coefficients show that the effect of the primary sector foreign direct investment is positive and statistically significant at the 10% and 5% significance levels, respectively. In contrast, that of the secondary and tertiary sectors is insignificant. The coefficient of the general foreign direct investment is found to be statistically insignificant. These results confirm that the type rather than the quantity of foreign direct investment may be more relevant in explaining economic growth. Other control variables exhibit their expected signs except that of openness to trade. Based on these findings, the study recommends more and strategic foreign direct investment incentives to the primary sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the asymmetric non-linear relationship between insurance and economic growth in Nigeria between 1976 and 2010. Prior studies have examined the direction of causality between insurance and economic growth with mixed conclusions in the insurance-growth literature. Moreover, the majority of these studies assumed symmetric causal relationships by concentrating mainly on testing the supply-leading and demand-following hypothesis. This paper, therefore, contributes to the literature by examining the asymmetric causality test between insurance and economic growth in Nigeria. After the cointegration, the asymmetry causality and the asymmetric impulse responses show a robust significant relationship between high gross domestic product (GDP) and low insurance in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that democracy enhances technological change, the most important determinant of long-term economic growth. It first presents an argument on how and why dictators restrict civil liberties and diffusion of information to survive in office, even if this reduces their personal consumption. The argument predicts that autocracies have slower technological change than democracies, which in turn impairs GDP per capita growth rates. These and other implications from the argument are tested empirically, and so are implications from alternative explanations on the association between democracy and technological change. Drawing on an extensive global dataset, with some time series going back to the early 19th century, the paper reports robust evidence that democracy increases not only technology-induced growth but also net economic growth rates. Notably, the results hold when accounting for the endogeneity of democracy, country-fixed effects, and sample-selection bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the impact of domestic and international tourism on the economic growth process for 179 European regions. The econometric analysis is based on a spatial growth regression framework where the rate of GDP per capita growth at the regional level for the period 1999-2009 depends on tourism flows, in addition to the traditional growth variables. Besides controlling for initial conditions, we also include a wide set of covariates to account for the endowment of human and technological capital and for the geographical, social and institutional features of the regions. The results, confirmed by several robustness checks, demonstrate that regional growth is positively affected by domestic and international tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background China has been experiencing huge changes in all aspects, including dermatologic research, since its reform in 1978. However, it is not known how the economic and intellectual development has influenced the publication trends in the field of dermatology, which could mirror the scientific development in other medical disciplines. In the present study, we analyzed publication trends from dermatology departments in mainland China from 2002 to 2011. Methods All publication data were obtained from . Only papers published from dermatology departments in mainland China were used for analysis. Results The number of publications increased 10-fold over this 10-year period. A total of 1231 articles were published in English in 251 journals between 2002 and 2011. A total of 129 journals published only one paper from dermatology departments in mainland China. Over 60% of articles were original research, and 21.7% were case reports. Among these 251 journals, foremost was the Journal of Clinical Experimental Dermatology, which published 5.9% of all papers from mainland China; 2.7% of papers were published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. The number of publications positively correlated with the changes in gross domestic product per capita during the study period. Conclusions These results suggest that the number of publications in the dermatology field has increased markedly in mainland China over the last 10 years. This dramatic increase in publications could be attributed, at least partially, to the significant improvement in economic conditions in mainland China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign direct investment (FDI) plays an important role in the socio‐economic advancement of developing countries. In the last decade, FDI inflows from China into Côte dʼIvoire have grown rapidly. Using quarterly time series data from 2003Q1 to 2017Q4, this study probes if China FDI has any significant welfare impact on the citizens of Côte dʼIvoire vis‐à‐vis if a causal relationship exists. The policy outcome is to stimulate further discourse that will reduce poverty and enhance the living standard of the population. The study uses vector autoregressive (VAR) and the Toda and Yamamoto (1995) modification of the non‐Granger causality test to determine if a causal relationship exists and the direction of causality. The empirical analysis provides evidence of a unidirectional causality from China FDI to social welfare (proxied by the human development index [HDI]) but no indication of causality between China FDI to economic welfare (proxied by real gross domestic product per capita [GDPPC]). This study, which is borne out of empirical curiosity, fills a lacuna in the FDI literature. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is a novel contribution that examines the FDI‐welfare nexus between China and a developing economy like Côte dʼIvoire. Thus, policies that will further stimulate FDI inflows from China must be carefully crafted to attract funding to the most productive sectors of the economy in order to improve both social and economic welfare. By extension, the policies may be adapted by developing economies with similar characteristics to Côte dʼIvoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The Human Development Index (HDI), as one of the more complex composite indicators of the level of human potential and quality of life, is a combination of three dimensions (indicators, factors): life expectancy at birth, the middle number of years of education and the expected number of years of schooling combined into a single education index and economic benefits expressed by production, or GDP (gross domestic product) according to purchasing power (PPP US $). Methods: The same measures and average achievements in the field of health, education, and living standards are presented. The HDI was first developed in 1990 under the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and is published as Human Development Reports (HDR). At present, it has become the most widely used complex indicator suitable for international comparisons and assessments of the achieved development level of a particular country or region. Results: The paper deals specifically with the more perspective view of human development in the Western Balkans, with a series of socio‐economic implications for the development policy of the countries under observation. Conclusion: The particular significance of the conducted research stems from the fact that in the countries of the Western Balkans are identified factors at the beginning of the transition period were often marginalized in the creation of macroeconomic policies, but in recent years there have been more positive developments in that regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States spends nearly 1/5th of its GDP on healthcare. Yet, to achieve value‐based care, the Economist describes the US healthcare system as handicapped by multiple, disparate silos that prevent the organization and sharing of data. This paper explores the current state of clinical oncology drug research and its relationship to value‐based cancer care. Clinical Chemotherapy Pathways are proposed as a unifying structure to bring together disparate sources of data to increase value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims at investigating the impact of the Great Recession on per capita GDP convergence process across European regions and countries. Using the time‐varying factor model developed by Phillips and Sul for the period 2000–2015 and two different merging procedures to identify clubs, we provide evidence of the diverging impact of the Great Recession "between" the higher and the lower convergence clubs at both regional and country levels as well as of the strengthening of the convergence process "within" most clubs. In addition, we add further evidence to the common belief of a "multi‐speed" Europe by contrasting Eastern European countries' and regions' behavior vis‐à‐vis original European members' one, and by identifying the factors that affect club membership and resilience to the recent economic downturn. We find that the membership in the higher clubs and resilience to the Great Recession are positively affected by the presence of several local‐specific factors and macroeconomic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bent line quantile regression model can describe the conditional quantile function of the response variable with two different straight lines, which intersect at an unknown change point. This paper proposes a new approach via a smoothing technique to simultaneously estimate the location of the change point and other regression coefficients for the bent line quantile regression model. Furthermore, the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator are derived, and a formal test procedure for the existence of a change point is also provided. Simulation studies are carried out to demonstrate the finite sample performance of the proposed method. We also illustrate the proposed method by applying it to the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and the life expectancy at birth data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the effects of the financial liberalization strategy adopted on the African continent over 25 years ago in promoting new business entry using data from 22 sub‐Saharan African (SSA) countries in 2006–2017. Results from the dynamic generalized method of moments models show that: financial development via a policy of financial liberalization does not have a uniform effect on entrepreneurship; the interest rate gap significantly undermines the entrance of new firms; the ratio of broad money/gross domestic product (GDP) was positive and statistically significant while real interest rate had mixed findings; interactive effects of interest rate spread and real interest rate with regulatory quality was negative; the interaction of interest rate spread and real interest rate with natural resources confirms its destabilizing effect, although there was evidence suggesting that natural resources do not directly undermine entrepreneurship growth. Other results show real GDP and private credit have a significantly positive effect, and the cost of getting electricity significantly undermines entrepreneurship. The study calls for the need to deepen the financial sector though targeted reforms across SSA countries to reap its growth‐inducing effects on economic outcomes, while promoting institutional quality and efficient use of natural resources to achieve a non‐declining infusion of SMEs on the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]