Felzárkózás és/vagy távolságtartó követés? A visegrádi országok térségeinek fejlődéséről = Catching up and/or following at a distance? On the prospect of the regions of the Visegrad countries

Az Európai Unióhoz 2004-ben csatlakozott a négy visegrádi ország (V4), Csehország, Lengyelország, Magyarország és Szlovákia. Az itt élők nagy reményeket fűztek a csatlakozáshoz, a vérmesebb elvárások szerint pár éven belül életszínvonaluk felzárkózhat a fejlett nyugati tagállamokéhoz. A „felzárkózás”, „közeledés”, „utolérés”, egy bizonyos felfogásban „konvergencia” sokrétű és sokféle értelmezésben használt fogalmak, vágyott célként egy-másfél évszázada fogalmazódnak meg a kevésbé fejlett országokban, térségekben. Az Európai Unió regionális politikájának is egyik fő célja a kevésbé fejlett régiók fejlődésének felgyorsítása és felzárkóztatásuk a tagállamok átlagához. Tanulmányunkban azt vizsgáljuk, hogy e négy, közepesen fejlett, hasonló történelmi múlttal és társadalmi-gazdasági szerkezettel rendelkező posztszocialista ország térségeinek mennyire volt sikeres a felzárkózása az Európai Unió korábbi tagállamainak átlagához 2000 és 2014 között. A felzárkózás főbb jellemzőinek vizsgálatához a NUTS3-as területi szintet vesszük alapul. Alapvető kérdésünk, hogy megfigyelhető-e felzárkózás, ha igen, akkor e területi szinten hasonló vagy nagyon eltérő mértékű volt? Az egy lakosra jutó, vásárlóerő-paritáson számolt bruttó hazai termék (GDP) alakulását elemezzük, a felzárkózás mértékében megfigyelhető egyenlőtlenségeket pedig az entrópián alapuló Theil-indexek segítségével vizsgáljuk. A megyék felzárkózását befolyásoló tényezők közül kettőt elemzünk részletesen: az országos folyamatok hatását, illetve a megye legnagyobb városának – mint potenciális agglomerációs előnnyel rendelkező településnek – lehetséges szerepét

Isolation and well-being in the time of lockdown

In response to the Covid‑19 health crisis, the French government has imposed various measures, referred to as social-distancing measures, including a lockdown with the primary objective of reducing face-to-face interactions between people in order to limit the spread of the virus. This paper seeks to determine if the social-distancing measures and lockdown lead to social isolation for certain people and have an impact on French people’s well-being. First, it reveals that the feelings of social isolation have substantially increased in France during this lockdown.  Second, it explores the factors that help to explain these changes by developing a predictive model and reveals that living alone, being a woman, being young are factors that explain this increase in felling of social isolation. Third, the estimation of the effects of changes in feelings of social isolation on changes in the reported level of well-being of French respondents during lockdown shows that people who reported feeling more socially isolated than others has the lowest levels of well-being among the French population; and that the increase in people’s feelings of social isolation during lockdown is a factor that has a negative impact on their level of well-being

Early childhood and primary education efficiency in Europe: a data envelopment analysis approach

This study explores the use of data envelopment analysis with bias correction of technical efficiency scores to measure ‘efficiency’ in early childhood and primary education. It also advances a potential framework derived from the ‘human capital paradigm’ to support the selection of inputs and outputs in efficiency assessment. Finally, it illustrates some specific features of early childhood and primary education in Europe (as well as the United States and Japan as referential countries) and provides empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of ‘education technologies’ and their performances among these countries. It is found that Nordic countries have the highest output-based technical efficiency

Egészségmagatartás-modell tesztelése többváltozós technikákkal

A tanulmány az egészség szociálpszichológiai leképezésével kapcsolatos modellt és többváltozós statisztikai módszerek segítségével végzett tesztelést mutat be. A konfirmatív faktorelemzés eredményeképpen belátható, hogy a vizsgált sokaságban nem azonosítható egyértelműen az elméleti irodalomban szereplő négy dimenzió, azonban alacsonyabb mérési szintet feltételezve, a várt összefüggések kirajzolódnak

Income inequality and economic growth : an empirical analysis of Kenya

Despite the well-known potential benefits of equality of income in economic growth, the statistics for Kenya show that income is heavily skewed in favour of the rich and against the poor with the country’s top 10% households controlling 42% of the total income while the bottom 10% controls less than 1%. The existing empirical evidence for the Kenyan economy does not shed light on whether there is a robust association between income inequality and growth over time. This paper provides an empirical investigation on the relationship between income inequality and economic growth and the hypothesis addressed was: inequality is harmful for growth. We contribute to the literature by employing an autoregressive distributed lag model using a time series date spanning from 1990–2015. The study found a significant positive but weak long run relationship between income inequality and growth. The short run was a strong positive relationship, which was significant at 1% level. This income inequality favours the rich, and therefore, to ensure fair distribution of wealth and a balanced growth, a policy goal should be equity in income distribution to reduce excessive income disparities. More research should be carried out on all other measures of inequality, to bring to light, which among them is more influential to GDP growth

Is the Ricardian equivalence hypothesis valid? : an empirical study for Ethiopia

There are two main dimensions of dealing with the topic of Ricardian Equivalence Hypothesis (REH) – the Keynesian proposition and the REH itself. According to the REH, today's borrowing to stimulate the economy or tax reduction – a substitution of debt for taxes -does not affect demand and consumption levels. However, the reverse is true for the Keynesian proposition. The objective of this paper is to test the validity of the REH in Ethiopia using annual data running from 1990 to 2011 by employing the bound testing – ARDL approach. The study included three main variables (the budget deficit, government consumption expenditure, and government debt) which contribute to the REH along with another variables. The result shows that government debt failed to fulfil REH. This implies that, in this study, we found limited evidence of the validity of the REH in Ethiopia

Editorial for the Special Issue “Spatial and regional aspects of health”

The health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic highlights, more than ever, the necessity of scientific research to inform policy action. During such a crisis it is vital that any measure taken by policy makers mitigates the consequences on health without causing long-lasting social and economic harm. Spatial aspects play an important role here: knowledge about the spread of a disease through space and social networks, the effectiveness of different policy responses, and the economic and social implications for the population are of particular relevance. As any policy action is embedded in its institutional and social environment, not every measure is effective in all contexts. Moreover, infectious diseases can spread at different speed in different places, requiring tailored interventions. Careful evaluation and comparison of different settings, including the organization of the healthcare systems and the geographic and demographic characteristics of a region or country, are therefore essential. The COVID-19 pandemic has made manifest the importance of the spatial and geographical dimension of health, however, the relevance of this interlinkage is not limited to the spread of contagious diseases. Differences in accessibility of services between urban and rural regions, the varying costs of access to healthcare for different (socioeconomic) groups of the population, the impact of these on healthcare utilization, and environmental shocks on population health are just a few examples illustrating the close link between space, socioeconomic factors and health. This special issue of REGION is presented in two parts. In the first part, papers explore the spread and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and economy. In the second part, papers investigate regional and spatial aspects of the healthcare sector with a focus on health disparities

Contribution of cardiovascular risk factors in the thrombotic complications of essential thrombocythaemia: a Hungarian single-institute retrospective analysis.

OBJECTIVE: Essential thrombocythaemia (ET) is a myeloproliferative neoplasm in which there is an increased risk of thrombotic complications. The conventional thrombosis risk assessment of these patients is based on an age over 60 and a history of thrombosis. The aim of this report is to analyse the contribution of cardiovascular risk (CV) factors as possible additional thrombotic risk factors in the thrombotic complications seen in ET. PATIENTS AND METHODS: One hundred and one ET patients (72 females and 29 males with a median age of 61 years) were enrolled between 1999 and 2011. Mann-Whitney and multivariate binary logistic regression tests were performed. The Kaplan-Meier method followed by the log-rank test was used to evaluate the probability of thrombosis-free survival. RESULTS: The presence of one or two or more CV risk factors significantly increased the risk of thrombosis. Separately, the contribution of high blood pressure and hyperlipidaemia proved to be influential, whereas tobacco use, diabetes mellitus and obesity were not significant. Significant differences were revealed in the probability of thrombosis-free survival between patients without CV risk factors and those with at least one CV risk factor, and between those with at most one CV risk factor and those with two or more CV risk factors. CONCLUSIONS: On the basis of the results on the current cohort, it is suggested that CV risk factors may influence the thrombotic complications in ET