Search results

This article aims to relate investments in human capital to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), and examine the spending levels necessary to achieve high performance in related SDG sectors for Azerbaijan.

Employing data from the World Bank, the empirical approach undertaken in this study relies on peer analysis by examining spending levels for nations exhibiting similar income levels and geographical proximity to Azerbaijan.

This study estimates that total spending in education would need to increase by 0.4 percentage points of GDP by 2030, while total spending in health would need to increase by 5.9 percentage points of GDP by 2030 for Azerbaijan.

This study contributes to the literature by conducting an empirical analysis in which other nations can emulate in measuring their relative progress on human capital investments and related UN SDGs.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2023-0137

Increased trapped heat in the atmosphere leads to global warming and economic activity is the primary culprit. This study proposes the nonlinear impact of economic activity on cooling degree days to develop a climate Kuznets curve (CKC). Further, this study explores the moderating role of higher education and renewable energy in diminishing the climate-altering effects of economic activity.

All the selected BRICS economies range from 1992 to 2020. The CKC analysis uses a distribution and outlier robust panel quantile autoregressive distributed lagged model.

Results confirmed a U-shaped CKC, controlling for population density, renewable energy, tertiary education enrollment and innovation. The moderating role of renewable energy and education can be exploited to tackle the progressively expanding climate challenges. Hence, education and renewable energy intervention can help in reducing CKC-based global warming.

This study highlighted the incorporation of climate change mitigating curriculum in education, so that the upcoming economic agents are well equipped to reduce global warming which must be addressed globally.

This study is instrumental in developing the climate change-based economic activity Kuznets curve and assessing the potential of higher education and renewable energy policy intervention.

The empirical analysis dealt in this paper emphasizes on the impact of military expenditures on out of pocket (OOP) healthcare payments. A sizeable body of defence economics literature has investigated the trade-off between military and public health expenditure, by testing the crowding-out or growth-stimulating hypothesis; does military expenditure scaling up crowd-out or promote governmental resources for social and welfare programs, including also state health financing?

In this study, panel data from 2000 to 2018 for 129 countries is used to examine the impact of military expenditure on OOP healthcare payments. The dataset of countries is categorized into four income-groups based on World Bank's income-group classification. Dynamic panel data methodology is applied to meet study objectives.

The findings of this study indicate that military expenditure positively affects OOP payments in all the selected groups of countries, strongly supporting in this way the crowding-out hypothesis whereby increased military expenditure reduces the public financing on health. Study econometric results are robust since different and alternative changes in specifications and samples are applied in our analysis.

Under the economic downturn backdrop for several economies in the previous decade and on the foreground of a potential limited governmental fiscal space related to the Covid-19 pandemic adverse economic effects, this study provides evidence that policy-makers have to adjust their government policy initiatives and prioritize Universal Health Coverage objectives. Consequently, the findings of this study reflect the necessity of governments as far as possible to moderate military expenditures and increase public financing on health in order to strengthen health care systems efficiency against households OOP spending for necessary healthcare utilization.

Despite the fact that a sizeable body of defence economics literature has extensively examined the impact of military spending on total and public health expenditures, nevertheless to the best of our knowledge there is no empirical evidence of any direct effect of national defence spending on the main private financing component of health systems globally; the OOP healthcare payments.

The purpose of this study is to solve the problem of healthcare waste management in developing countries. The buildup of medical waste has attracted the attention of all spheres of society due to the expanding population and developing economy. Timely collection and processing of medical waste are extremely important due to its potential hazards. Although the problem of planning medical waste management has been addressed in developed countries, it persists in several developing countries. This research is motivated by an example of a city in India characterized by a dense population, abundant health-care facilities and a lack of planning for managing large medical waste generated daily.

The authors address the problem of designing the network of collection and processing facilities for medical waste and optimizing the vehicle route that collects and transfers the waste between facilities. Due to distinct topographic restrictions in the considered city, the collection and transfer process needs to be conducted in two echelons – from hospitals to collection centers using smaller vehicles and then to the processing facilities using trucks. This work addresses these two problems as a two-echelon location-routing problem.

A mixed-integer programming model is developed to minimize the cost of opening the facilities and transporting medical waste. Several managerial insights are drawn up to assist planners and decision-makers.

This study follows a case study approach to provide a descriptive and prescriptive approach to hospital waste management in the ancient city of Varanasi. The city has witnessed unplanned growth over the years and is densely populated. The health-care facilities in the city have a large catchment area and attract patients from neighboring districts. The situation analysis based on secondary data and unstructured interviews of the stakeholders suggests that the ad hoc approach prevails in present hospital waste management in the city.

This study aims to examine whether geopolitical risk (GPR) impacts the cash holdings behavior of 210 Turkish firms between 2005 and 2019. The authors choose Turkey as a country of interest because Turkey has an important place in terms of geographical location and serves as a bridge between Europe and Asia. Considering the prominent role that can play in decision-making processes, the authors thought that analyzing the impact of GPR on the cash holdings determinants of Turkish firms would be important and interesting. A widely accepted view is that GPRs play an important role in the economic decisions of emerging countries, such as Turkey.

The authors examine models with fixed effects (FE), random effects (RE) and pooled ordinary least squares (POLS), respectively. First, the authors analyzed whether POLS, FE or RE would be the most appropriate model. According to the F-test and the Breusch–Pagan LM test, the FE and the RE models are more suitable than POLS. Then, according to the Hausman test results, the authors found that FE is this study's most appropriate model. After determining the validity of FE, the diagnostics tests of heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation and serial correlation tests are examined. Due to the presence of these problems, Driscoll and Kraay's (1998) test, which is the robust standard error estimator, is used.

The authors find a positive relationship between GPR and cash holdings after controlling firm-level control variables. Firms faced with uncertainty prefer to hoard cash as a precautionary measure. In keeping with real options theory, firms postpone the investments of firms under uncertain conditions. The use of alternative measurements for GPR and cash holdings ensures the validity of our results. The authors' research reveals that investors and politicians should pay more attention to the influence of GPR on the determinants of the cash holdings of firms.

There are limitations for this study, but this study may provide opportunities for further studies. First, this study has only data from Turkey. This situation mitigates cross-country effects. In future studies, the number of firms, countries of focus and time span can be expanded. Second, this study does not consider the period of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that increased risk and uncertainty worldwide. Further studies may consider the impact of COVID-19 and geographical risks relating to cash holdings. Third, the authors try to choose more relied independent and control variables.

The authors' results provide some insights that are relevant to practitioners and policymakers. Managers need to consider GPR in managers' financial decisions based on managers' firm-specific characteristics. Turkish policymakers should target improving policies to alleviate the negative effects of GPRs. Regulators should postulate more encouraging policies to firms in an environment of GPR. Regulators can give firms more time to understand and analyze the GPRs and the impacts of GPRs to adjust regulators' day-to-day activities.

There are fewer studies in the literature that analyzed the relationship between GPR and cash holdings. This study aims to full this gap in the literature.