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In this paper, the authors assess the responsiveness of OOP healthcare expenditure to macro-fiscal factors, as well as to tax-based, SHI, mixed systems and voluntary PHI financing. Although the relationship between OOP expenditure, macroeconomy, aggregate public and PHI financing is well documented in the existing empirical literature, little is known for the impact of several macro-fiscal drivers and the existing health financing arrangements associated with voluntary PHI on OOP expenditure.

The authors gather panel data by applying three official organizations’ databases. They elaborate static and dynamic panel data methodology to a dataset of 49 European and OECD countries from 2000 to 2015.

The authors’ findings do not indicate a considerable impact of GDP growth and general government debt as a share of GDP on OOP payments. Unemployment rate presents as a positive driver of OOP payments in all three compulsory national health systems post to the 2008 economic crisis. OOP payments are significantly influenced by countries’ fiscal capacity to increase general government expenditure to GDP in SHI and mixed health systems. Additionally, study findings present that government health financing, irrespective of the different health systems structure characteristics, and OOP healthcare payments follow different directions. Voluntary PHI financing considerably counteracts OOP payments only in tax-based health systems.

In the backdrop of a new economic crisis associated to the COVID-19 epidemic, health policy planners have to deal with the emerging unprecedented challenges in financing of health systems, especially for these economies that have to face the fiscal capacity constraints owing to the 2008 financial crisis and its severe recession.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, there is no empirical consensus on the effects of macro-fiscal parameters, different compulsory health systems financing associated with the parallel voluntary PHI institution funding on OOP expenditure, for the majority of European and OECD settings.

Decentralization has profound implications for many health systems. This study investigates the effect of health system decentralization in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries on public health security capacity and health service satisfaction.

Multiple linear regression analyses were employed for variables related to the level of health security capacity and satisfaction with the healthcare system while controlling for all socio-demographic variables from the European Social Survey, including over 44,000 respondents from 25 OECD countries. The Health Systems in Transition series of countries were used for assessing the decentralization level.

The result of multiple linear regression analyses showed that the level of decentralization in health systems was significantly associated with higher health security capacity (ß-coefficient 3.722, 95% confidence interval (CI) [3.536 3.908]; p=<0.001) and health service satisfaction (ß-coefficient 1.463, 95% CI [1.389 1.536]; p=<0.001) in the study. Countries with a higher level of decentralization in health policy tasks and areas were significantly likely to have higher health services satisfaction, whereas this satisfaction had a significant negative relation with the lower level of decentralization status of secondary/tertiary care services in OECD countries (ß-coefficient −5.250, 95% CI [−5.757–4.743]; p = 0.001).

This study contributes to a better understanding of the extent to which decentralization of health services affects public health safety capacity and satisfaction with health services, whereas the level of decentralization in OECD countries varies considerably. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of public health security and satisfaction with health care delivery in assessing the effects of decentralization in health services.

Because of the 2008 global financial crisis aftermaths, economic downturn and prolonged recession, several OECD countries have adopted an austerity compound by significantly reducing public health expenditure (PHE) for dealing with their fiscal pressure and sovereign-debt challenges. Against this backdrop, this study aims to examine the responsiveness of PHE to macro-fiscal determinants, demography, as well to private health insurance (PHI) financing.

The authors gather annual panel data from four international organizations databases for the total of OECD countries from a period lasting from 2000 to 2017. The authors apply static and dynamic econometric methodology to deal with panel data and assess the impact of several parameters on PHE.

The authors’ findings indicate that gross domestic product, fiscal capacity, tax revenues and population aging have a positive effect on PHE. Further, the authors find that both unemployment rate and voluntary private health insurance financing present a negative statistically significant impact on our estimated outcome variable. Different specifications and sample periods applied in the regression models reveal how inseparably associated are PHE and OECD's economies compliance on macro-fiscal policies for offsetting public finances derailment.

Providing more evidence on the responsiveness of PHE to several macro-fiscal drivers, it can be a helpful tool for governments to reconsider their persistence on fiscal adjustments measures and rank public health financing to the top of their political agenda. Health systems policies for meeting Universal Health Coverage (UHC) objectives, they should also take into consideration the voluntary PHI institution, especially for economies with insufficient fiscal capacity to raise public health financing.

To the best of knowledge, the impact of unemployment and voluntary PHI funding on public health financing, apart from other macro-fiscal and demographical parameters effect, remains unnoticed in the existing published studies on the topic.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of national investment in vocational education and training (VET) on the economic growth through the mediating role of social inclusion.

This study is based on a panel data of 31 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries for 15 years collected through secondary sources.

The statistical results of the study have supported the entire hypotheses. Particularly, the results demonstrate that the social inclusion strengthens the contribution of VET in the economic growth.

This study offers various policy implications for the policy makers of developing countries. Particularly, the policy makers of developing countries need to emphasize on social inclusion to enhance the contribution of national investment in VET while following the vocational education models of developed nations.

This study offers its theoretical contribution in the literature of VET by highlighting a mediating mechanism to explain how national investment in VET can contribute in economic growth through social inclusion.

The basis of international comparative analysis is the harmonisation of the different conceptual systems of the discipline under investigation in various countries. The enterprises, which are the spring of the economy, can be grouped in different ways in the different countries. The goal of this paper is to compare the Hungarian practice with that of the European Union (EU), the European OECD countries and the USA. Following a short overview of the terminology, this paper seeks an answer to the question of how Hungary became – in less than a decade – a country of small enterprises. Phenomena such as the breaking up of huge companies or dismantling into small and medium‐size enterprises and the increasing number of newly founded small‐size businesses sooner or later lead to changes in the policies of these enterprises and thus contribute to the development of a functioning market economy. The map of the Hungarian economy had changed significantly by the end of the 1990s. A radical shift in the size and types of companies was brought about by market economy forces, which led to a transformation. As a result, the process of accession to the EU was begun. In the preliminary and preparatory stages, the opportunities for small and medium‐size enterprises (SMEs) must be enhanced, as presently the economic significance of SMEs in Hungary is smaller than their strategic importance. All these objectives are supported by concrete and long‐term governmental strategies and measures.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate energy efficiency of 132 countries from 2007 to 2014 according to their performance, categorizing the nations into similar groups.

Data envelopment analysis model based on Goal Programming and then K-Means clustering algorithm are used to determine the efficiency and clustering the nations based on their efficiency performances.

The results of the study reveal that developing low-income countries could lead to high energy-efficiency scores, and countries with different development and income levels can become efficient in the field of energy consumption. Following the nations during a seven-year period also indicates that the changes in energy-related indicators such as renewable energy consumption and energy productivity are the main drivers to move a country between clusters.

The present study aimed to investigate whether similar nations with similar energy efficiency level in a cluster are similar in their development and income level, and changing the energy consumption pattern during the seven-year period could move the countries from a cluster to another one.

In this study, the author intend to investigate the impacts of renewable energy use and environmental taxation on sustainable development measured by the adjusted net savings (ANS).

This study employs the quantile regression (QR) for a set of 24 Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development (OECD) countries over the period 1994–2018.

The main empirical findings of estimates show that access to renewable energy and environmental taxation generate positive and significant effects in increasing the ANS for most quantiles. Hence, they are practical tools for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs).

This study has important implications for governments and policymakers of the OECD countries. Therefore, governments can use subsidies and incentives to promote the adoption of renewable energy sources, energy-efficient technologies and sustainable practices. Similarly, by imposing taxes on pollution and resource use, governments can encourage the adoption of cleaner technologies and practices toward more sustainable behavior.

This paper is based on a novel measure of sustainable development (ANS) and a novel econometric method (QR).

This chapter looks at the development of contractual savings and institutional investors in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia (EJMT), and their links with the development of equity markets. The chapter identifies four major potential contributions of contractual savings to capital market development as well as “impact pre-conditions” that can help them obtain. It concludes that contractual savings and institutional investors are neither necessary nor sufficient for the development of equity and bond markets. Nevertheless with certain conditions in place they can have a large impact. The presence of these conditions in EJMT are assessed.

Paying and repaying behavior are financial functions of great interest to private financial actors and public regulators, as also to academic researchers. The purpose of the paper is to empirically analyse paying and repaying behavior by combining theoretical insights from an emerging field in economics known as “culture and finance” with ideas from the economic analysis of social capital and trust in the context of different regulatory systems.

The present paper investigates with the help of panel data whether a culture of social trust and the scope of morality have an influence on paying and repaying behavior in different European and OECD countries.

The analysis shows that culture has an effect on firms' credit losses from the customers' payment defaults, on the overall riskiness of paying behavior and on the level of non‐performing bank loans. Also the complexity of law‐based regulation has an influence on paying and repaying behavior. The analysis also shows that high trust and morality are associated with less complex regulation and vice versa.

The results help private financial actors, regulators and public policy makers to design more appropriate behavioral environments for paying and repaying.

The paper provides the first analysis of an important issue and it serves both practical interest and further research on the topic.