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The economic shock posed by the current COVID-19 outbreak brought out a worldwide public health emergency with a close relationship between the industrial marketing practices, the health level of society and its economic development. The purpose of this study is to analyse the industrial dynamics in health care and their impact on economic growth and health status.

To empirically investigate the relationship between growth and health, the authors use a data set drawn from 29 selected Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries over the period 2000 and 2019. Using panel regressions, the authors investigate the impact of the health-care industry measured in terms of health status, health expenditure, sales on pharmaceutical products, the number of persons working in health care and the coverage by private health insurances. Fixed effect and random effect regressions are used to estimate this model.

Overall, the results are suggestive of a nexus between the industrial marketing dynamics of health-care context and economic growth – both interacting and improving each other. As the quality of the health-care market enhances, the economy grows richer and the health status of the population improves considerably.

To support health-care markets in OECD countries, health policymakers need to formulate a long-term industrial health policy that addresses all the social and individual determinants of health.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to provide a better understanding of the relationship between health-care industrial dynamics and economic growth in OECD countries along different dimensions.

This study aims to explain the role of health on economic growth for OECD countries in the context of sustainable development. Accordingly, the study investigates the relationship between health and economic growth in OECD countries.

This study employed cluster analysis and econometric methods. By cluster analysis, 12 OECD countries (France, Germany, Finland, Slovenia, Belgium, Portugal, Estonia, Czech Republic, Hungary, South Korea, Poland and Slovakia) were classified into two clusters as high and low health status through health indicators. For panel threshold analysis, the data included growth rates, life expectancy at birth, export rates, population data, fixed capital investments, inflation and foreign direct investment for the period of 1999–2016.

The study determined two main clusters as countries with high health status (level) and low health status (level), but there was no threshold effect in clusters. It was concluded that an increase in the life expectancy at birth of countries with higher health status had no significant impact on economic growth. However, the increase in the life expectancy at birth of countries with lower health status influenced economic growth positively.

This study used data that including period of 1999–2016 for OECD countries. In addition, the study used cluster analysis to determine health status of countries, and then panel threshold analysis was preferred to explain significant relations.

This study showed that the role of health on economic growth can change toward country groups as higher and lower health status. It was proved that higher life expectancy can influence economic growth positively in countries with worse or low health status. In this context, developing countries, which try to achieve sustainable development, should improve their health status to achieve economic and social development at the same time.

The paper underpins an advanced domestic manufacturing that comes with some advanced employment specialization status of individual industries as the key determinant of foreign direct investment (FDI) and considers how FDI in the food processing industry in India relates to this focal point.

This paper investigates how inward FDI inflows relate to domestic investment and revival in the industry using Auto Regressive Distributed lags (ARDL) model over the period 2000–2017. The model allows for different specifications to study whether FDI is responsible for the revival or the prior revival induces the FDI.

The results show the lack of proper advanced specialized employment status of the food processing industry. FDI in food processing is mainly guided by exports and imports opportunities and FDI plays no role in the revival of advanced growth in the industry. This finding explains why FDI in the industry is predominantly service sector oriented.

The paper underlines (1) the proper conceptualization of human capital as an important determinant of FDI; (2) reinterpretation of Kaldor's technical progress function that uncovers how employment dynamics embedded in intermediate goods specializations play a key role in supporting a higher pace of investment (and FDI); (3) labor costs' importance should involve not only the wage rate but also the advantages that a specialized employment base and (4) FDI in manufacturing demands a greater policy focus on developing domestic bases of intermediate goods specializations.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the relationship between parental child feeding practices with growth status of Orang Asli (OA) children in Negeri Sembilan.

This is a cross-sectional study conducted amongst 190 OA children aged 4–6 years studying at Tabika KEMAS OA in Negeri Sembilan. Mothers were interviewed to obtain socio-demographic information while feeding practices were assessed using Malay version of Comprehensive Feeding Practices Questionnaire (CFPQ-M). Growth status of the children were determined using WHO ANTHRO Plus software. Three indicators of growth status assessed were weight-for-age (WAZ), height-for-age (HAZ) and body mass index (BMI)-for-age (BAZ) z-scores.

The mean score for feeding practices used by the mothers while feeding their child showed that most of the mothers practiced modelling (3.71 ± 0.82), encouraging balance and variety (3.52 ± 0.76) and environment (3.66 ± 0.66) while the practice of restriction to weight (1.85 ± 0.79) and emotional regulation (2.20 ± 0.96) were low. Most of the OA children had normal WAZ (70.0%), HAZ (71.1%) and BAZ (84.2%). Amongst the three indicators of growth status, BAZ was used to study the relationship with feeding practices. The use of feeding practices such as pressure (r = −0.34, p < 0.01), food as a reward (r = −0.23, p=<0.01), child control (r = −0.18, p = 0.01) and restriction to weight (r = 0.19, p = 0.01) were associated with BAZ.

This study only focussed on OA children of Temuan and Semelai sub-ethnics studying at kindergarten specific for OA children, thus findings could not be generalised to the entire OA population in Malaysia.

There is a need to address the OA population as they continue to be amongst the most disadvantaged population often affected with poor health and social outcomes.

In this study, a wide range of scales in that represents different feeding practices in CFPQ-M was assessed instead of focussing on limited type of feeding practices. Thus, a better understanding was observed regarding the healthy and unhealthy feeding practices. The result of this study could be useful to update the existing literature of OA research, and to plan suitable interventions with regards to feeding practices and growth status of the children, especially amongst this vulnerable community.

While poverty alleviation is the first core goal of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and microfinance institutions (MFIs) are considered important instruments for poverty alleviation in developing countries as they provide credit access to the poor, there is surprisingly little evidence of the drivers of the lending behavior of microfinance institutions. Hence, the purpose of this study is to identify the factors that influence the credit growth of MFIs in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The study relies on unbalanced panel dataset of 130 MFIs operating across 31 countries in SSA during the period 2004–2014 constituting 546 useable observations. The study uses the Arellano-Bover/Blundell-Bond two-step generalized method of moments (GMM) Windmeijer bias-corrected standard errors to estimate the models.

The results confirm that while capitalization, liquidity and size are positively associated with credit growth, profitability negatively impacts credit growth; whereas, other MFI specific factors namely portfolio quality, deposit growth and nondeposit borrowing growth have little direct effects on MFI credit growth. The results also show that MFI credit growth is pro-cyclical but negatively related to GDP per capita consistent with the theory of convergence. On the other hand, inflation and employment are not important covariates in the credit growth of MFIs.

The findings suggest that if MFIs improve their liquidity and size by attracting more deposits and nondeposit borrowings, among others, they can increase credit access to the poor. Moreover, since the lending behavior of MFIs is not resilient to GDP shocks, different measures are needed to increase the financial stability of the microfinance industry. In this respect, since MFI capitalization is positively associated with credit growth and MFI credit growth is pro-cyclical, the findings provide useful insights to central banks/regulatory authorities and the Basel Committee as to the need for a counter-cyclical capital buffer requirement in the microfinance industry.

The study is the first comprehensive study to examine the drivers of MFI lending behavior as an extension to lending behavior models from the banking industry.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is two‐fold. First, it studies whether output volatility and growth are linked at the firm‐level, using data for German firms. Second, it explores whether the link between volatility and growth depends on the degree of credit market imperfections. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use a novel firm‐level dataset provided by the Deutsche Bundesbank, the so‐called Financial Statements Data Pool. The dataset has time series observations for German firms for the period 1997‐2004, and the authors use information on the debt‐to‐assets or leverage ratio of firms to proxy for credit‐constraints at the firm‐level. As additional proxies for the importance of credit market imperfections, we use information on the size and on the legal status of firms. Findings – The authors find that higher volatility has a negative impact on growth for small and a positive impact for larger firms. Higher leverage is associated with higher growth. At the same time, there is heterogeneity in the determinants of growth across firms from different sectors and across firms with a different legal status. Practical implications – While most traditional macroeconomic models assume that growth and volatility are uncorrelated, a number of microeconomic models suggest that the two may be linked. However, it is unclear whether the link is positive or negative. The paper presents additional evidence regarding this question. Moreover, understanding whether credit market conditions affect the link between volatility and growth is of importance for policy makers since it suggests a channel through which the credit market can have long‐run welfare implications. The results stress the importance of firm‐level heterogeneity for the effects and effectiveness of economic policy measures. Originality/value – The paper has two main novel features. First, it uses a novel firm‐level dataset to analyze the determinants of firm‐level growth. Second, it analyzes the growth‐volatility nexus using firm‐level data. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper, which addresses the link between volatility, growth, and credit market imperfections using firm‐level data.

The unorganised manufacturing sector contributes one third share of overall manufacturing employment and one fifth share of gross value added of the manufacturing sector. Despite its important role in large-scale employment generation, this sector is neglected by the researchers as well as by the policy makers as compared to the focus given on the organised manufacturing sector. The issues of energy intensity, environment emissions and growth of unorganised manufacturing enterprises (UMEs) remain unexplored. The present chapter attempts to estimate the CO₂ emission and emission intensity (EI) across UMEs on the basis of NSSO Unit Level data of 62nd, 67th and 73rd rounds. It also analyses the growth of UMEs in relation to CO₂ emission and EI. The nature of the sector is very much dispersed. Our study reveals that a portion of unorganised enterprises did not use any energy in their production activities and used manually operated instruments like – handlooms, weaving machines, hand-operated oil and rice mills, etc. The main energy inputs of UMEs are electricity and fuel & lubricants. The CO₂ emission is relatively less in UMEs compared to organised manufacturing enterprises. Across the unorganised manufacturing industries, the higher CO₂ emission are observed in manufacturing of food product industry and other non-metallic mineral industry. The study found that CO₂ EI of UMEs depends on firm-level characteristics like perennial nature, establishment type, urban location and expanding growth status. However, capital intensive UMEs are more polluting.

This paper aims to study the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) channels in improving local firms' productivity. Two transmission channels of knowledge spillovers are empirically investigated. The study focuses on the role of high-growth firms (HGFs) that are assumed to have a higher absorptive capacity.

A threshold regression model that considers country and sector fixed effects is applied to investigate 8525 firms across 50 sectors in 12 developing countries in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region.

The author's findings indicate that first, larger firms with external market linkages are more productive. Second, high-growth enterprises are powerful engines of job creation; however, the firms do not outperform other firms in terms of capacity in absorbing FDI spillovers and do not have higher productivity.

The findings highlight the necessity of rethinking public policy priorities to support firm growth. Policies to maximize the gains from FDI spillovers are discussed.

This is the first study to investigate the strength of FDI spillover channels across different sectors, and the channels' impact on the productivity of local enterprises in the EAP region. This study also explores the potential role of high-growth firms (HGFs) in this interaction via job creation and improving output growth rate.

The purpose of this paper is to examine fashion clothing consumption in relation to status consumption and perceptions of fashion clothing brand status (BS) in transition economies.

A survey was designed and administered in China to a sample of 460 young adults aged between 18 and 24.

The results indicate that individuals’ status consciousness (SC) has an impact on fashion clothing brand preference (BP) and perceptions of the brand's status. Also, individuals’ BP and perceived BS were found to mediate the relationship between individuals’ SC and their willingness to pay (WTP) a premium for a specific brand of fashion clothing.

The originality of this study rests on a detailed examination of SC and status perceptions in the context of branded fashion clothing (western vs Asian brands) in China, where individuals’ wealth, status-consciousness and brand-consciousness are growing. Equally, it provides knowledge for academics about the development of status consumption in an emerging economy. Importantly, from a theory perspective this study is the first to examine the intervening roles of perceived BS and BP in the relationship between SC and WTP a price premium for fashion clothing brands. Further, studying this evolving market provides insights for practitioners into the design of marketing strategies for their brands. The findings may assist practitioners to address drivers of perception of their brands, especially for Asian brands competing against western brands.

The role of care as a critical influence on child nutrition, health, and development has received increasing attention in the last decade. While the role of care has been well elaborated at a conceptual level, we still lack simple valid and reliable tools to measure many aspects of care. Psychosocial care includes the behaviors and practices that support children's healthy growth and psychosocial development. The research presented here constitutes one of the first attempts to quantify some of the various dimensions of child‐care practices (namely type, quality, and frequency) and to summarize the information into a composite, age‐specific index of child‐care practices. The main purpose of this research is to examine, specifically within the context of Pakistan, which of the maternal and household characteristics constituted more severe constraints to the provision of good child care. The main findings of this research have important policy implications. They suggest that specific training in child feeding and the use of preventive health services for poor mothers with little formal education could have a large impact on the growth of children living in impoverished environments.