Comparative financing analysis and political economy of noncommunicable diseases

The pandemic of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) poses substantial challenges to the health financing sustainability in high-income and low/middle income countries (LMICs). The aim of this review is to identify the bottle neck inefficiencies in NCDs attributable spending and propose sustainable health financing solutions. The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the “best buy” concept to scale up the core intervention package against NCDs targeted for LMICs. Population- and individual-based NCD best buy interventions are projected at US$170 billion over 2011–2025. Appropriately designed health financing arrangements can be powerful enablers to scale up the NCD best buys. Rapidly developing emerging nations dominate the landscape of LMICs. Their capability and willingness to invest resources for eradicating NCDs could strengthen WHO outreach efforts in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, much beyond current capacities. There has been a declining trend in international donor aid intended to cope with NCDs over the past decade. There is also a serious misalignment of these resources with the actual needs of recipient countries. Globally, the momentum towards the financing of intersectoral actions is growing, and this presents a cost-effective solution. A budget discrepancy of 10:1 in WHO and multilateral agencies remains in donor aid in favour of communicable diseases compared to NCDs. LMICs are likely to remain a bottleneck of NCDs imposed financing sustainability challenge in the long-run. Catastrophic household health expenditure from out of pocket spending on NCDs could plunge almost 150 million people into poverty worldwide. This epidemiological burden coupled with population ageing presents an exceptionally serious sustainability challenge, even among the richest countries which are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Strategic and political leadership of WHO and multilateral agencies would likely play essential roles in the struggle that has just begun.     

Board diversity reforms: Do they matter for EU bank performance?

We examine the impact of governance reforms related to board diversity on the performance of European Union banks. Using a difference‐in‐difference approach, we document that reforms increase bank stock returns and their volatility within the first 3 years after their enactment. The type of reform matters, with quotas increasing return volatility. The effectiveness of reforms depends on a country's institutional environment. The impact of reforms on return volatility is found to be beneficial in countries more open to diversity, with common law system and with greater economic freedom. Finally, reforms play a bigger role in banks that have ex ante less heterogeneous boards.     

Learning organization at higher education institutions in the EU: proposal for implementing philosophy of learning organization—results from research

Quality & Quantity - For an organization to develop, to improve, and to innovate in this information age, it requires a management system that will maximize use of human potential that it has...     

Entry of painters in the Amsterdam market of the Golden Age

We analyze the evolution of the entry of painters and price of paintings in the XVII century Amsterdam art market. In line with evolutionary theory, demand-driven entry in the market was first associated with product innovations and a rapid increase in the number of painters. After reaching a peak, the number of painters started to decrease in parallel with a price decline and the introduction of process innovations. To test for the role of profitability in the art market as a determinant of endogenous entry of painters, we build a price index for the representative painting inventoried in Dutch houses. This is based on hedonic regressions controlling for characteristics of the paintings (size, genre, placement in the house), the owners (job, religion, value of the collection, size of the house) and the painters. After a peak at the beginning of the century, the real price of paintings decreased until the end of the century. We provide anecdotal evidence for which high initial prices attracted entry of innovators, and econometric evidence on the causal relation between price movements and entry.     

Is Financial Fragility a Matter of Illiquidity? An Appraisal for Italian Households

We investigate household financial fragility in Italy, providing three main contributions. First, we propose a novel characterization of financial fragility that is not necessarily linked to indebtedness, distinguishes between expected and unexpected expenses, takes portfolio composition into account, and is free of subjectivity bias. Second, we use it to assess the importance of household portfolio composition for determining the difficulties related to coping with unexpected expenditures, besides socio‐economic and demographic factors. Third, we test its ability to forecast future conditions of financial distress. The empirical analysis is based on the Bank of Italy Survey on Household Income and Wealth. The results highlight the relevance of portfolio choices as determinants of financial distress, that is, they provide evidence that homeownership increases the likelihood of financial fragility while the presence of a mortgage decreases it. Moreover our measure is shown to act as an early warning indicator of distress.     

Convenience food consumption in the Nordic countries and St. Petersburg area

Building on the theoretical framework provided by sociological research on eating practices, family meals, self‐cooked meals and time use, this study examines national differences and similarities in the use of convenience food in Northern Europe. The study draws on two quantitative sets of data, the primary data set (N = 8248) collected in 2012 in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and the complementary data set (N = 800) collected in St. Petersburg area in 2013. In general, consumers’ attitudes towards convenience food were negative. Time saving was an important motivator for convenience consumption in all countries. The effects of other attitudes were diffuse and factors such as low cost, health effects, and taste of convenience food, affected convenience consumption differently in different countries. In the four Nordic countries women used less convenience food than men. In Finland and in Norway older respondents used convenience food less often than the young. Generally, the use of convenience food was most frequent among those living alone. The effects of education and occupation were small, implying that the phase of life is more important than social stratification in explaining convenience food consumption. In the St. Petersburg data, there were no differences related to social background.     

Short- and long-run heterogeneous investment dynamics

In this paper, we model the dynamics of business investment taking into account asset-specific characteristics potentially affecting the reactivity of aggregate and disaggregate capital accumulation over the business cycle. We estimate Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and traditional investment (non-ICT) determinants within a Vector Error Correction Model testing the assumptions of the flexible accelerator and neoclassical model as well as the role of financial constraints and uncertainty. We evaluate our model on Italian data over the period 1980–2012, and we check our results also with Spanish and UK data. Our findings support the assumption that capital is heterogeneous since short- and long-run determinants are significantly different across the assets. Traditional assets experience stock adjustment costs while ICT investment incurs flow adjustment cost. In the short run, liquidity is a key determinant of investment independently of the asset type. In the long run, uncertainty significantly affects ICT. Finally, the results of the counterfactual exercises support the idea that ICT is a key policy variable to foster economic growth.     

Environmental Policy and the International Diffusion of Cleaner Energy Technologies

Technology transfer is an important channel of technological change and sustainable development for countries with less innovative ability than technological leaders. This paper studies whether domestic environmental policies affect the inward technology transfer of cleaner innovation from abroad. We focus specifically on the power sector, for its important role in the decarbonization process, by looking at zero-carbon (renewable) and carbon-saving (efficient fossil) technologies for energy production. Using data on cross-country patent applications, we provide evidence that environmental policy contributes to attracting foreign cleaner technology options to OECD markets but not to non-OECD markets. We show that this is due to the nature of the implemented policy instruments. Market-based approaches positively impact technology transfer to both OECD and non-OECD economies, while non-market based approaches have at best only a weak effect in OECD countries. Domestic environmental policies may provide too weak a signal for foreign innovators in countries off the technological frontier. This calls for a strengthening of policy incentives for technology transfer in light of pressing climate change objectives.     

Knowledge Management and Customer Relationship Management for Accounting Services Companies

By combining the abilities to respond directly to customer requests and to provide the customer with a highly interactive, customized experience, companies have a greater ability today to establish nurture and sustain long-term customer relationships than ever before. The ultimate goal is to transform these relationships into greater profitability by increasing repeat purchase rates and reducing customer acquisition costs. Customer relationship management （CRM） has a significant potential to leverage an organization＇s performance, but it does not come without a clear sense of destination and typically without pain. For the research methodology we use the database of customers of a Romanian accounting services company Vulpoi ＆ Toader Management SRL, which is an important player in this market. The goal of our paper is to find out the link between knowledge management （KM） and CRM for this company and how these ＂innovations＂ contribute to increasing the value of the business.