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To estimate the discounted money value of human lives lost (DMVHL) due to COVID-19 in Spain.

The study employs the human capital approach to estimate the DMVHL (assuming Spain's life expectancy of 83 years and a 3% discount rate) of the 20,453 human lives lost in Spain from COVID-19 as of 19 April 2020. Sensitivity analysis was conducted alternately assuming (a) 5% and 10% discount rate; and (b) global life expectancy of 72 years, and the world's highest life expectancy of 87.1 years.

The 20,453 human lives lost due to COVID-19 had a total DMVHL of Int$ 9,629,234,112, and an average of Int$ 470,798 per human life lost. Alternate re-estimation of the economic model with a 5% and 10% discount rates led to 19.8% and 47.4% reductions in the DMVHL, respectively. Re-calculation of the economic model using the global life expectancy of 72 years, while holding the discount rate constant at 3%, diminished the DMVHL by 41%. While the re-run of the same model using the world's highest life expectancy of 87.1 years instead, it increased the DMVHL by 18%.

The study omits the value of health systems inputs used in preventing, diagnosing and treating COVID-19 cases; and the negative impact of COVID-19 on the agriculture, education, finance, manufacturing, travel, tourism, and trade sectors.

There is a need to use this kind of evidence to advocate for increased investments into the strengthening of the national health system, IHR capacities, and coverage of safe water and sanitation facilities.

In Spain, no other study had attempted to estimate the net present value of human lives lost from COVID-19.

Background: This study aimed to appraise the monetary value of human life losses associated with COVID-19 in Turkey. To our knowledge, it is the first study in Turkey to value human life losses associated with COVID-19.

Methods: A human capital approach (HCA) model was applied to estimate the total monetary value of the 4,807 human lives lost in Turkey (TMVHL) from COVID-19 by 15 June 2020. The TMVHL equals the sum of monetary values of human lives lost (MVHL) across nine age groups. The MVHL accruing to each age group is the sum of the product of discount factor, years of life lost, net GDP per capita, and the number of COVID-19 deaths in an age group. The HCA model was re-calculated five times assuming discount rates of 3%, 5%, and 10% with a national life expectancy of 78.45 years; and the world highest life expectancy of 87.1 years and global life expectancy of 72 years with 3% discount rate.

Results: The 4807 human life losses from COVID-19 had a TMVHL of Int$1,098,469,122; and a mean of Int$228,514 per human life. Reanalysis with 5% and 10% discount rates, holding national life expectancy constant, reduced the TMVHL by Int$167,248,319 (15.2%) and Int$ 429,887,379 (39%), respectively. Application of the global life expectancy reduced the TMVHL by 36.4%, and use of world highest life expectancy increased TMVHL by 69%. However, the HCA captures only the economic production losses incurred as a result of years of life lost. It ignores non-market contributions to social welfare and the adverse effects of economic activities.

Conclusions: Additional investment is needed to bridge the persisting gaps in international health regulations capacities, universal health coverage, and safely managed water and sanitation services.

The predominant neoliberal structure of capitalism and tourism as the fuel of capitalism exposes growing problems of injustice, unfairness and inequality. Places and communities around the world are currently expressing the need for radical changes in placemaking to be able to think, plan and act differently. This theoretical contribution adopts a humanistic management (HM) perspective of placemaking to promote places where people enjoy living, working, interacting and having meaningful experiences. Tourist destinations are relevant places to discuss the application of HM principles in practice and promote humanistic destinations and the humanisation of placemaking. This chapter concludes by arguing for an interface with eco-centric and posthumanist transformative approaches to promote holistic value-based placemaking and regeneration of places.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an estimate of the costs of premature mortality caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using COVID-19 pandemic-derived mortality data for November 9, 2020 (globally 1,303,215 deaths) and applying a country-based value of statistical life (VSL), the worldwide cost of premature mortality was assessed. The cost was assessed based on income groups until November 9, 2020 and projected into the future until March 1, 2021 using three scenarios from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

The global cost of premature mortality is currently estimated at Int$5.9 trillion. For the high-income group, the current estimated cost is Int$ $4.4 trillion or $3,700 per person. Using IHME projections until March 1, 2021, global premature mortality costs will increase to Int$13.7 trillion and reach Int$22.1 trillion if policies are relaxed, while the cost with 95% universal masks is Int$10.9 trillion. The richest nations will bear the largest burden of these costs, reaching $15,500 per person by March 1, 2021 if policies are relaxed.

The cost of human lives lost due to the pandemic is unprecedented. Preparedness in the future is the best policy to avoid many premature deaths and severe recessions in order to combat pandemics.

This research aims to review literature on development finance and its challenge and to examine blended learning and insurance as a catalysts of development finance. In particular, this paper provides new insights and practical examples of blended finance and insurance.

This research basically relies on literature review and case study to show the value of the emerging methods of blended learning in development finance and insurance system.

Basic finding in this paper includes new insight of blended finance and insurance as a partnership between public and private sector, which offers new arena for academic research and practice.

As the research relies on literature review and authors' insight, originality may not be valued so much, but if may be introducing or creating new ideas or thinking about development finance or international development cooperation where relevant data or experience is still lacking.

The objective of this paper is to propose a methodology to estimate the benefits and costs of stakeholder engagement (SE). Indeed, in the transport sector, it is consolidated that a good decision-making process foresees the involvement of the main stakeholders, but what are the benefits and costs of the SE? How to quantify these impacts and explicitly take them into account in a cost-benefit analysis? In this paper, an attempt to answer these questions is provided.

In this paper, a methodology is proposed to estimate the benefits and costs of SE. Moreover, the proposed methodology is applied to a case study with an attempt to identify direct and indirect cost and benefit drivers within the context.

A range of examples of the monetary costs and benefits of SE is provided through the case study of the high-speed rail corridor connecting Bari and Naples in Italy.

Limits in quantifying all the aspects of engagement.

To be adopted by public administrations when deciding whether carrying out a project.

Social inclusion is a must in any decision-making process concerning big projects affecting the community.

The original value of this paper is to provide a contribution to the current literature on the quantitative representation of the impacts of SE. Indeed, a methodology to quantify and monetize the costs and benefits of SE is proposed.

In this article, we reflect on how smart technology is transforming service research discourses about service innovation and value co-creation. We adopt the concept of technology smartness’ to refer to the ability of technology to sense, adapt and learn from interactions. Accordingly, we seek to address how smart technologies (i.e. cognitive and distributed technology) can be powerful resources, capable of innovating in relation to actors’ agency, the structure of the service ecosystem and value co-creation practices.

This conceptual article integrates evidence from the existing theories with illustrative examples to advance research on service innovation and value co-creation.

Through the performative utterances of new tech words, such as onlife and materiality, this article identifies the emergence of innovative forms of agency and structure. Onlife agency entails automated, relational and performative forms, which provide for new decision-making capabilities and expanded opportunities to co-create value. Phygital materiality pertains to new structural features, comprised of new resources and contexts that have distinctive intelligence, autonomy and performativity. The dialectic between onlife agency and phygital materiality (structure) lies in the agencement of smart tech–enabled value co-creation practices based on the notion of becoming that involves not only resources but also actors and contexts.

This paper proposes a novel conceptual framework that advances a tech-based ecology for service ecosystems, in which value co-creation is enacted by the smartness of technology, which emerges through systemic and performative intra-actions between actors (onlife agency), resources and contexts (phygital materiality and structure).

Is humanity heading to immortal living? If so, what areas of society are playing an active role in achieving this? In order to understand this, the study explores the relationship between immortality and the wellness and medical tourism industry to seek potential relationships between them and ultimately, asks difficult questions about the growth of these tourism sectors and the potential need for greater regulation of them.

Taking a pragmatic philosophical approach and through the examination of refined information from secondary sources and published material and reports, the study presents original theoretical knowledge and a model exploring tourism and human immortality.

This paper argues that continued growth in the wellness and medical markets today could lead to a world where transhumanists and cyborgs are present in our world, even taking over from Homo sapiens. The study presents a model highlighting the potential role of wellness and medical tourism markets, illustrating the potential for future consumer services that could further fuel the search for immortality. Thus, how such markets and consumer desires are (in)directly supporting humanities desire for (non-human) immortal existence.

Today, individuals are driven by wellness practices and medical and cosmetic desires and are willing to travel the globe in search of companies who are either capable of carrying out the desired procedures or seeking prices more affordable to them. This research offers novel insights into these complex relationships and maps the affiliation between wellness and medical practices and the concept of immortality.

This first chapter explores the basic foundation of corporate ethics: the human person in all its dignity and mystery, its corporeality and emotionality, and its cognitive and volitive capacities of moral development. Four fundamental characteristics of the human person, namely individuality, sociality, immanence, and transcendence, will be examined for their potential to understand, live, experience, and witness corporate ethics and morals. We explore the profound meaning and mystery of human personhood invoking several philosophies of the good and human dignity as exposed by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas in the West, by the doctrine of Dharma in the East as expounded by Gautama Buddha, Mahabharata, and Bhagavad Gita, and by Prophets Confucius and Tao, in the East. Several contemporary cases of great human personhood are analyzed: for example, Peace Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela from South Africa (1993) and Peace Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo from China (2017) – cases of human abuse that turned into triumphs of human dignity.

In the wake of the extraordinary financial scandals that both preceded and followed the September–October Financial Crises of 2008, discussions about the executive virtues of honesty and integrity are no longer academic or esoteric, but critically urgent and challenging. As representatives of the corporation, its products and services, corporate executives in general, and production, accounting, finance, and marketing executives in particular, must be the frontline public relations and goodwill ambassadors for their firms, products, and services. As academicians of business education, we must also analyze these corporate wrongdoings as objectively and ethically as possible. What is wrong must be declared and condemned as wrong, what is right must be affirmed and acknowledged as right. We owe it to our students, our profession, our stakeholders, and to the business world. Contemporary American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) proposes the issue of morality in a threefold question: Who am I? Who ought I to become? How ought I to get there? The answer to every question refers to the virtues, especially to corporate executive virtues. This chapter explores corporate executive virtues, especially the classical cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice as defining and enhancing corporate executive life.