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This study investigates the impact of total health expenditure on life expectancy in a panel of 43 African countries from 2000 to 2018.

The dynamic panel generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method developed by Arellano and Bond (1991) is used in this study. This approach generates estimates that are heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation consistent, as well as controls for unobserved time-invariant country-specific effects and eliminates any endogeneity in the panel model.

The results reveal that health expenditure on its own has a positive significant influence on life expectancy. However, health expenditure via the moderating effect of government effectiveness reduces life expectancy. The authors also observe that school enrollment and the level of economic activity significantly drive life expectancy.

The study is limited to 43 out of 54 African countries, and it covers a period of 18 years: 2000 to 2018.

The authors argue that larger health expenditure will aid in improving the life expectancy rate in Africa. However, in practice, this would be difficult given the needs of other priority sectors.

Since most developing countries' health expenditures are small, a policy option is that healthcare services should be subsidized such that the poorest people can also access them.

The study differs from the previous attempts, and with this, the authors contribute significantly to the literature. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors are unaware of any study considering the role of government effectiveness as a moderating factor in investigating the effect of health expenditure on life expectancy in the African context. Thus, the authors fill a yawning gap in the literature. Second, the authors employ a recent dataset with larger sample size. Finally, to address the problem of endogeneity and simultaneity bias, the authors use the system GMM technique.

This paper aims at identifying the major obstacles to business enterprise in an emerging economy and how these obstacles are associated with different characteristics of the enterprises.

The study relied on the World Bank Enterprise Survey data on Ghana and applied binary and ordinal probit regression techniques to estimate the associations between the characteristics of the enterprises and the identified obstacles. Significance testing of the associations is also conducted.

The five main obstacles perceived by most of the enterprises in the study are access to finance, electricity, access to land, customs and trade regulations and tax rates. These obstacles are associated in different ways to growth rate (high vs low growth), scale (small and medium vs large), age, size of employees, the experience of the top manager and ownership (wholly domestic vs foreign ownership).

As a cross-sectional study focusing on Ghana, the findings are informative about the major obstacles facing business enterprises in an emerging economy; however, the ecological validity of these findings may be limited to factors specific to Ghana.

Given the representativeness of the Enterprise Survey, policymakers can rely on these findings to formulate useful policies to promote the operations of business enterprises.

This study examines the relationships between parents' and children's occupations to determine the existence of intergenerational transmission of occupations.

To achieve the purpose of the study, four predominant occupational types based on the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO): agriculture and forestry; services and sales; managerial/administrative; and professional/technical are examined using data from the latest (7th) round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS). Two complementary methods involving the correlational analysis and regression-based techniques are used.

The findings indicate the presence of parental influences on children's occupational choices (same-sex and cross-sex) in the Ghanaian labour market, with maternals and same-sector effects having a more substantial influence on children's occupational choices, especially in agriculture and forestry, and services and sales sectors.

The lack of panel data in observing children's occupational choices over time makes it challenging to assume direct causation.

The study is the first to highlight the relative strengths of paternal influence (father's effect) and maternal impact (mother's effect) on sons' and daughters' occupational choices in Africa. The findings have several implications for intergenerational (im)mobility of occupations including how policymakers can make career guidance more effective.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-10-2022-0705

The purpose of this paper is to investigate gender differences in risk aversion and determine the effect of personality traits on risk aversion from an African country context.

The study combined both descriptive and analytical designs, and employed t-test, Pearson’s χ² and binary logistic regression as the main analytical techniques. Data for the analysis were obtained from the World Bank’s Skills toward Employment and Productivity survey on Ghana.

Results of the study revealed systematic differences in personality and gender and their associations with risk aversion. Specifically, women were found to be more risk averse than men. Differences in personality also showed that females reported higher levels of personality in all but one of the Big Five personality traits – extraversion. In addition to gender, age and education, the personality traits of conscientiousness and stability were the main predictors of the likelihood of being risk averse. Although personality differences existed between male and female, the interaction terms between gender and personality factors were not statistically significant.

The paper departs from the extant literature on developed countries and western cultures to add to the understanding on how individual differences account for variation in revealed risk preferences.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of mobile money access on internal remittances received, per capita consumption expenditure and welfare of household in Ghana.

The study used data from the latest round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 7) and employed the propensity score matching technique to estimate average treatment effect between users and non-users of mobile money transfer services.

The study finds that using mobile money is welfare enhancing, particularly for poor households and the channel by which it impacts on welfare is through higher internal remittances received and per capita expenditure. The results from the average treatment effect indicate that mobile money users receive significantly higher remittances and consequently spend averagely higher on consumption than non-users.

Although the data employed in this study is limited to one country, the findings support the financial inclusion role and developmental impact of mobile money transfer services. Hence, mobile money transfer services should be promoted and facilitated by the telecommunication and financial sector regulators.

In addition to making original contribution to the literature on the welfare impact of mobile money, the study's use of the propensity score matching is unique.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanisms that link transformational leadership to employee job satisfaction by examining the moderating effect of contingent reward on the relationships.

The study employed explanatory and cross-sectional survey design. Data were obtained from 315 bank employees and analyzed using correlational and multiple regression techniques.

The results revealed that there are positive relationships between the dimensions of transformational leadership and job satisfaction which are augmented by contingent reward. However, the relationships of idealized influence and intellectual simulation to job satisfaction are moderated by contingent reward, implying that, in the banking sector, the positive influence of these transformational leadership traits on employee job satisfaction can be enhanced by contingent reward.

The paper makes an important contribution to the existing organizational literature by establishing the utility of contingent reward as a moderator on the relationship between transformational leadership and employee job satisfaction in a banking sector.

Innovative climate has now become a necessity to developing creative behaviours amongst employees. Hence, this study examines the mediating role of innovative climate on the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational performance in a developing context, Ghana.

The study employs quantitative research approach and cross-sectional survey design to collect data from 400 employees in 10 selected manufacturing companies in Ghana. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation and macro-PROCESS regression techniques in SPSS.

It is established that all the dimensions of transformational leadership have direct positive and significant effect on organizational performance. At the same time, innovative climate significantly mediated the causal relationship between all the dimensions of transformational leadership and organizational performance, thus creating indirect effect of transformational leadership on organizational performance which is greater than the direct effect.

This study provides new findings to bridge the gap in the general leadership literature by revealing that innovative climate is an effective mediator in the relationship between the dimensions of transformational leadership and organizational performance in a developing country context. Therefore, this study provides evidence for enhancing organizational performance with transformational leadership through innovative climate.

This study aims to assess the relationship between sleep habits and obesity in children.

This is an observational cross-sectional case–control study conducted on 100 children aged 6–12 years, selected randomly from the OPC of the Pediatric Hospital, Ain-Shams University. The subjects were subdivided into two groups: the control group of 50 and the target group of children who are classed overweight or obese. Subjects were excluded where the obesity could be explained owing to an endocrinal and/or any identified disease, those who have a medical or psychiatric illness, and those whose parents refused to give consent. All patients had a full history taken, and each child’s parent fulfilled one questionnaire on sleep behaviors.

This study found that 72% with bedtime resistance compared to only 14% among the control subjects, 68% of children experienced a delay with sleep onset compared to 14% among controls, 68% experienced sleep duration abnormalities compared to 12% in the control group, 60% of children stated they needed their parents while going to sleep, compared to 12% among controls, 64% of cases suffered from walking during the night compared to 12% among controls, 64% of cases had a Parasomnia compared to 12% among controls, 66% of cases snoring loudly compared to 12% among controls, and 66% suffering from Apnea, compared to 6% in the control group, and 50% of cases had daytime sleepiness compared to 14% among controls.

It is hoped that this research will be remedied through the adoption of a child-centered approach inspired by the rights to health and play, and the general principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

The results showed a strong association between excessive weight and increased risk of sleep problems, which were broadly diffused in the population childhood.

This current study has given us a base for the overwhelming fact that these children are directly affected by obesity. A chronic medical condition has enormous implications on health and can lead to many associated disease processes.

The aim of this study is to conduct an initial investigation of information sharing between the vast number of expatriate employees and the small minority of local employees in Dubai’s private sector workforce. Research on the impact of the workforce localization policy has highlighted the frequent marginalization of locals within the expatriate-dominated private sector. One form of this is the reluctance of expatriates to share information with local recruits, and the authors conducted this study to assess the reality and extent of this phenomenon.

The authors designed a brief interview survey to probe how Emirati employees secure workplace information and whether they experience information withholding on the part of expatriate colleagues. The authors also explored whether any such experience impacts on their attitudes to working in the private sector since this is a key factor in the success of the localization policy. Complete responses were received from 0.9 per cent of the total local private sector workforce.

A notable lack of information sharing emerged with 58 per cent of respondents reporting their expatriate colleagues’ and superiors’ reluctance to share information with them, and 63 per cent describing experiences of discriminatory behavior.

The authors identify key cultural and communication issues relating to localization within Dubai’s multicultural workforce. These include the broader cultural factors that determine how Emiratis conceptualize information sharing. Future research can pursue this issue to help inform the development of supportive information sharing practices. Such practices are an essential part of the creation of a diversity climate, which is necessary to sustain localization.

This study is a pioneering attempt to empirically investigate the information sharing practices that Emirati private sector employees experience. It suggests that the exclusion of citizens from the workplace through practices such as “ghost Emiratization” reverberates in the workplace through a lack of information sharing.

The complex interaction between the gut flora and central nervous systems made probiotics one promising natural candidate for the management and treatment of depression. Hence, the purpose of this paper was to assess the knowledge, patterns of consumption and attitudes of patients with depression toward probiotics.

In this cross-sectional study, and through simple random sampling, 200 adults who were diagnosed with various depressive symptoms were selected. A link to a self-reported survey was sent to them with the aim of collecting sociodemographic data, assessing participants’ attitudes and knowledge toward probiotic consumption, and measuring their depression status via the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9).

A total of 164 participants (82%) provided usable responses. Approximately 55% of participants had moderate depression (PHQ-9). Participants (22.6%) tend to comply with their psychiatrists’ advice regarding probiotics more than other health specialists’ advice (p = 0.04). Only 59 (36%) had knowledge about probiotics and believed that probiotics should be consumed regularly and not only after an antibiotic course. However, many tended to follow marketing tricks and were willing to buy the most expensive and advertised probiotic products. Participants showed some differences in their attitude and knowledge toward probiotics according to symptoms severity; however, the differences were insignificant (p = 0.88).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is believed to be the first investigation assessing the probiotics’ knowledge, patterns of consumption and attitude of patients with various depression symptoms in Bahrain. The findings of this study may help improve the well-being of depressive patients by addressing the probiotic knowledge gap among them, expand the market of probiotics and enrich nutritional psychiatry literature.