Assessment of Avoidable Mortality Concepts in the European Union Countries, Their Benefits and Limitations

The concept of avoidable mortality is intended to assessing health care system performance. It is defined as premature deaths from selected disease groups that are considered either treatable through the timely and effective health care (amenable mortality), or preventable by public health interventions (preventable mortality). The purpose of study is to analyse the impact of four lists of causes of death created by researchers on amenable mortality by country, sex and cause of death. Data on deaths were obtained from the WHO database for 20 European Union countries in 2014. We applied the method of direct standardisation using the European Standard Population, Spearman rank‐order correlation with statistical significance tests and confidence intervals. We found that the selection of diseases considered as amenable has not significantly impact on the cross‐country comparison, but the weight of selected list of causes of death is significant at the national level. The concept has several limitations relating to selection of diseases and setting age threshold over time, availability of health care resources, prevalence of diseases or variation of causes of death coding among countries. However, indicator of avoidable mortality offers a way of the evaluating effectiveness of health systems in maintaining and improving population health

Sustainable Health and Wellbeing in the European Union

Background: Altogether, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an urgent call for action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. Goal 3 is crucial in terms of good health and wellbeing. The main aim of this study is to analyze and evaluate differences among indicators of SDG 3: Sustainable health and wellbeing in the EU countries. Methods: The status and development of the EU Member States regarding their successes or failures in terms of Goal 3 were subjected to analysis. Altogether, 11 indicators were used to rank the EU countries using the TOPSIS and ranking methods. The ranks were assigned to the countries in two periods. The first period is related to the time from 2010 till 2014, and the second period from 2015 till 2019. Results: The EU countries achieved a positive development in 10 of 11 indicators that monitor the achievement of the EU in terms of Goal 3. The only variable that changed negatively was the obesity rate. Positivity was observed in the decline of the standardized preventable and treatable mortality, which declined from 317.3 in the first period to 295 in the second period; the drop of the population weighted annual mean concentration of fine particulate PM2.5, from 16.4 to 13.6 μg/m3, and also in the increase of the share of people with good or very good perceived health, which was combined with a decrease of the self-reported unmet need for medical examination and care. The best-rated country in terms of SDG 3 was, in both periods, Sweden, while the worst-rated was Latvia. Conclusions: Governments and institutions in the EU can intervene to increase the accessibility and quality of the health care system, but every citizen should try to do their best to reduce some of the risk factors, such as smoking or obesity, to try living healthier and to help to achieve higher ambitions in terms of sustainable health and wellbeing

Satisfaction of inpatients with health care facilities and medical services in Slovak Republic

Evaluation of the healthcare facilities and inpatients satisfaction with healthcare services is a decisive point in the healthcare enhancement process. The aim of the study is to map the overall inpatients satisfaction with provided healthcare by healthcare facilities and its determinants in Slovak republic by using data from ranking of healthcare facilities published by Institute for Economic and Social Reforms (INEKO, 2021). Visual descriptive analysis reveals that there exist relatively large regional differences among inpatients satisfaction. Data indicates that there is no significant relationship between inpatient satisfaction and the number of inpatients per doctor; that there exists a negative nexus between complexity of provided healthcare and the overall inpatient satisfaction; and that positive relationship between the complexity and severity of treated diagnosis and the overall inpatient satisfaction can be observed. Regression analysis results indicate that inpatient satisfaction is positively linked to quality of the provided healthcare, overall rating of the hospital and to university hospitals; and negatively affected by operated inpatients to number of nurses ratio, reoperation, total rehospitalization within 30 days and to number of hospitalized inpatients

Decarbonized energies and the wealth of three European nations: a comparative nexus study using Granger and Toda-Yamamoto approaches

Considering the actual debate nuclear vs renewable that divides the green transition of the EU member states, this paper investigates the dynamic interactions between two sources of decarbonized energy (renewables and nuclear) and economic growth for three distinct economies: France, Spain, and Germany, all differing in their respective long-run nuclear planning. A complex methodological framework is employed to consider stationary (Augmented Dickey-Fuller test, Phillips-Perron test, Dickey-Fuller test, Elliott-Rothenberg-Stock test, Kwiatkowski-Phillips-Schmidt-Shin test, Zivot and Andrews test with structural break), cointegration (Johansen and Juselius test of cointegration, Gregory and Hansen cointegration test with breaks based on regime-trend shifts), long-run convergence (Vector Error Correction Model), causality (Granger causality test, Toda-Yamamoto non-causality test, and variance analysis (Impulse Response Functions) Empirical results for the period 1983–2019 fail to support the existence of statistical causality between renewable energy use and economic growth in France and Spain, which is congruent with the “neutral hypothesis”. Besides, while a weak one-way link is revealed from renewable energy use to GDP in Germany only, economic growth is found to substantially trigger nuclear energy consumption in Spain but not vice versa, thus corroborating the “growth hypothesis”. Accordingly, country-specific insights are provided to deploy low-carbon sectoral facilities in Spain, enhance the channels of radioactive waste treatment in France, and secure the nuclear phase-out in Germany

Gender health inequalities and economic productivity in OECD countries

The presented study deals with the relations between the economic life of developed countries and the health of women and men. The primary objective of the presented study was to assess the relations between gender health inequalities and economic productivity in a sample of OECD countries, with a focus on the classification of their health care systems. Analyses included selected causes of mortality as health variables, each in a specification of men and women, and economic productivity represented by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per person employed (in USD at current prices). The health care systems were represented by multiple insurance model (MI), national health system (NHS) and single payer model (SPM). The analysed data were collected from OECD databases for the period from 2011 to 2016. The analytical processing was carried out by applying descriptive analysis, regression analysis examining the effects of gender inequalities in health on economic productivity, and relationship analysis. Based on the findings, it can be stated that the vast majority of gender inequalities in health is significant. Also, it has been confirmed that gender inequalities in health have an effect on economic productivity. In general (with a few exceptions), it can be concluded that if gender inequalities in health are reduced, economic productivity is expected to increase. From the point of view of the analysed relations, the NHS health care system can be considered the most positive

Combined forecasts to improve Survey of Profession Forecasters predictions for quarterly inflation in the U.S.A.

The main aim of this study is to evaluate and improve the Survey of Professional Forecasters (S.P.F.) quarterly inflation rate forecasts. According to the Diebold–Mariano test, on the horizon 1991:Q1– 2015:Q1, there were no significant differences in accuracy between the four types of predictions provided by SPF (mean forecasts, median predictions, predictions of financial service providers [f1] and predictions of non-financial service providers [f2]). The main contribution is given by the use of the algorithm for stochastic search variable selection in order to construct Bayesian combined predictions. Considering the horizon 2013:Q1–2015:Q1, the proposed Bayesian combined predictions for rate of change in the quarterly average headline consumer price index (C.P.I.) level outperformed the initial experts’ expectations. The combined predictions based on the Bayesian approach and principal component analysis for core inflation and personal consumption expenditures inflation improved the accuracy of S.P.F. predictions and naïve forecasts on the horizon 2015:Q1–2016:Q1

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on selected areas of a management system in SMEs

The current pandemic, that has wider economic and social impacts, will put to the test all enterprises, which will be forced to search for new survival strategies and to create existential prognoses of business operations during great economic and social uncertainty and new crises whose impacts are hard to predict. This fact motivated the team of authors to realise the study that aims at researching and quantifying the impacts of the pandemic COVID-19 on selected areas of management in SMEs in the Czech Republic (CR) and the Slovak Republic (SR). The research sample consisted of 1502 SMEs, 822 SMEs before the pandemic, 680 SMEs during the pandemic, 814 from CR, and 688 from SR. Attitudes between SMEs according to nationality and period of research were verified with a chisquared test and Kruskal-Wallis tests. The results of both countries confirmed that the pandemic has a negative impact on the financial performance of SMEs. The government economic measures may help the enterprises to recover, said 40.0% of Czech entrepreneurs, but only 30% of Slovak entrepreneurs. However, the entrepreneurs in SMEs equally perceive other aspects of corporate governance and business risk management during the pandemic

Predictive potential and risks of selected bankruptcy prediction models in the Slovak business environment

In our study, we focused on the assessment of four bankruptcy prediction models, to figure out which model is most appropriate in the conditions of the Slovak business environment. Based on the previous research within the Slovak conditions, we set a portfolio of 4 models to be assessed: Altman model (1984), Ohlson model (1980), indexes IN01 and IN05 that were validated on the sample of 700 Slovak companies. Based on previous studies we expected that IN indexes are superior to Ohlson and Altman model. The excellency of our research lies in validation and assessing the accuracy of bankruptcy prediction models at three levels: the overall accuracy, accuracy of the bankruptcy prediction, and the non-bankruptcy prediction accuracy. This analytical structure enables to look at the topic more complexly and to increase the objectification of accuracy of analysed models. Based on the results, we showed that Ohlson model is not applicable to predict bankruptcy in the Slovak conditions as reached the lowest bankruptcy prediction ability even if has high non bankruptcy prediction ability. On the other hand, we have confirmed our expectation about the bankruptcy prediction ability of index IN05, that is proven to be superior to Ohlson and Altman model and so is the most appropriate model for Slovak business environment

An analysis of the impact of economic context of selected determinants of cross-border mergers and acquisitions in the EU

Cross-border mergers and acquisitions represent a significant global phenomenon that allows businesses to generate business synergies, procure assets, generate tax optimisations, gain access to new technologies and markets, increase competitiveness and market value and differentiate and diversify business activities. In this study, we analyse the impact of economic determinants which influence the year to year increase in the average volume of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) directed from the source country to the target country. We run binary logistic regression on the data which contains observation of selected indicators in EU countries (including the UK) within 1998–2015. Our data have nature of panel data. We study impact of selected indicators on the year to year increase of merges and acquisitions in the European Union. We document that market capitalisation growth has a positive influence on the year-on-year increase in the volume of M&A. We also provide proof that changes in relative distance between source and target country affects the volume of M&A and that existence of a common border between the source and target country induce an increase in M&A. Our study contributes to better understanding of the cross-border mergers and acquisitions phenomena and is complementary to already conducted research