Health has vital importance in maintaining economic development since it is essential for, and a result of, economic development. This indicates that health makes a large contribution in achieving ...sustainable development and health outcomes. The significance of health is shown in the millennium development goals (MDGs) and in the sustainable development goals (SDGs), where four of the seventeen objectives focus on improving health outcomes (UN, 2021). As compared to other countries, some Asian countries are still worse off regarding health outcomes and are facing challenges in achieving positive outcomes for such goals. This study mainly focuses on identifying the link between public health expenditures and health outcomes in nine Asian economies from 2000 to 2018. The study implements fixed effects panel data estimations by using the Hausman specification test to identify the fixed effects model as the suitable estimator for the study. The empirical results from the fixed effects technique show that immunization, GDP per capita, trade openness, and utilization of basic water service facilities improve under-five and infant mortality in Asian economies. However, ecological footprint increases under-five and infant deaths by damaging the environment.
"Municipal bonds are widely issued by local municipalities as a feasible financial alternative to fund infrastructure projects. On the other side, from the investors’ perspective, bonds issued by ...municipalities have historically been a popular investment option due to often favorable tax treatment for investors as well as the issuer’s credibility and generally high credit quality of the market.
The paper explores the factors that influence the size and interest rates of Romanian municipal bonds for a 20 years period starting from 2001, when the first issuance took place, to the present. The data collected were analyzed through multiple linear regressions using ordinary least square estimator. The results revealed that municipalities with large populations, higher levels of income and expenses, and longer maturity tended to issue more municipal bonds. On the other hand, the unemployment and inflation rates increased the interest rates. The regions, fund destinations, and political variables also influenced the levels of bonds issued as well as the interest rates.
These findings illustrated the importance of the context at local and national level, expressed by different social, economic and political variables that local governments should consider when issuing municipal bonds. The study contributes to the development of knowledge in the area of issuer’s characteristics and, moreover, the political, economic, and financial setting influences on the municipal bond market in an emergent country from Eastern Europe, Romania."
According to the seventh demographic census, China's elderly population reached 260 million, accounting for 18.7% of the total population, indicating that China is on the verge of transitioning from ...a relatively mild aging to a moderately aging society, and an aging society inevitably brings concerns about the elderly people's health. The purpose of this study was to better understand the effect of economic development on the physical fitness of the elderly people aged 60-69 in China during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, as well as to establish a correlation between China's gross domestic product (GDP) and changes in the elderly people's passing rate of national physical fitness standards.
A linear regression analysis was performed on the data of GDP and the passing rate of national physical fitness standards of Chinese elderly people aged 60-69 in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2014, and 2020.
The passing rate of national physical fitness standards for elderly people aged 60-69 increased linearly (
= 80.56%,
< 0.05), indicating that the physical fitness of the elderly tends to increase steadily with GDP expansion.
Between 2000 and 2020, the annual improvement in the physical fitness of the elderly people in China is inextricably linked to rapid economic development. Increased financial investments in public sports services and a corresponding national fitness plan all contribute to an overall improvement in the physical fitness of the elderly people. This outcome is the effect of fiscal and policy coordination, which may represent a distinctive Chinese model and contribution to the global effort to manage and improve population physical fitness.
This article examines how the resources transferred to private economic agents under favorable conditions through Constitutional Funds affect the GDP per capita of municipalities in the deprived ...regions of Brazil. We utilize data spanning from 2002 to 2019 and employ Spatial Econometrics models to address observed spatial autocorrelation. Additionally, we incorporate loans from other public sources to firms in these municipalities. The results reveal that both sources of loans have a minor positive effect on the GDP per capita of these municipalities.
Innovation holds the potential for economic prosperity. Biotechnology (BT) has proved to be a viable vehicle for the development and utilization of technologies, which has brought not only advances ...to society, but also career opportunities to nation-states that have enabling conditions. In this review, we assess the current state of BT-related activities within selected new and preaccession EU countries (NPA) of CEE region namely Croatia, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, examining educational programs, research activity, enterprises, and the financing systems. The field of BT covers a broad area of activities, including medical, food and agriculture, aquaculture or marine, environmental, biofuels, bioinformatics, and many others. Under the European Commission (EC), member-states are to set their Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialization (RIS3), to identify priorities or strengths in order to develop knowledge intensive economies. As the four countries highlighted in this review are in the early stages of implementing RIS3 or have not yet fully formulated, it presents an opportunity to learn from the successes and failures of those that have already received major structural funds from the EC. A critical point will be the ability of the public and private sectors' actors to align, in the implementation of RIS3 as new investment instruments emerge, and to concentrate efforts on a few select target goals, rather than distribute funding widely without respect to a long-term vision.
Given that the linear linkage between taxation and income inequality remains unclear, especially in Sub‐Saharan African countries, it is critical to explore how the redistribution channel of the tax ...system could mitigate income inequality within democratic institutions. Using the instrumental variable approach for robust analysis, this study explores the panel dataset of 42 Sub‐Saharan African countries from 1996–2014. The following findings are documented. First, both unconditional linkages between taxation and democracy overwhelmingly reduce income inequality. Second, harnessing democracy with taxation has a net effect that reduces income inequality. Overall, this study establishes that a strong democratic system strengthens the tax system for an income redistribution strategy to enhance income equality. This study is relevant for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SGD) 1 on poverty reduction, SDG 10 on inequality, and SDG 16 on strong institutions.
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Gatchair, Sonia D. 2015. “Ideology and Interests in Tax Administration Reform in Jamaica.” Politics & Policy 43(6): 887–913. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12139.
Nchofoung, Tii, Simplice Asongu, Vanessa Tchamyou, and Ofeh Edoh. 2022. “Gender, Political Inclusion, and Democracy in Africa: Some Empirical Evidence.” Politics & Policy 51(1): 137–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12505.
Wang, Yingyao. 2017. “Why Tax Policy Is Not Politics in China: Public Finance and China's Changing State‐Society Relations.” Politics & Policy 45(2): 194–223. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12200.
Tributación, democracia y desigualdad en el África subsahariana: Vínculos relevantes para los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible
Dado que el vínculo lineal entre los impuestos y la desigualdad de ingresos sigue sin estar claro, especialmente en los países del África subsahariana, es fundamental explorar cómo el canal de redistribución del sistema fiscal podría mitigar la desigualdad de ingresos dentro de las instituciones democráticas. Usando el enfoque de variable instrumental (IV) para un análisis robusto, este estudio explora el conjunto de datos de panel de 42 países del África subsahariana entre 1996 y 2014. Los siguientes hallazgos están documentados. Primero, ambos vínculos incondicionales entre impuestos y democracia reducen abrumadoramente la desigualdad de ingresos. En segundo lugar, aprovechar la democracia con impuestos tiene un efecto neto que reduce la desigualdad de ingresos. En general, este estudio establece que un sistema democrático fuerte fortalece el sistema tributario para la estrategia de redistribución de ingresos para mejorar la igualdad de ingresos. Este estudio es relevante para el logro del ODS 1 sobre reducción de la pobreza, el ODS 10 sobre desigualdad y el ODS 16 sobre instituciones sólidas.
撒哈拉以南非洲的税收、民主与不平等:与可持续发展目标的相关联系
鉴于税收与收入不平等之间的线性联系仍不明确, 尤其是在撒哈拉以南非洲国家, 因此, 探究税收制度的再分配渠道如何缓解民主制度内的收入不平等一事至关重要。本研究使用工具变量法(IV)进行稳健性分析, 探究了1996‐2014年间42个撒哈拉以南非洲国家的面板数据集。记录了以下发现。第一, 税收和民主之间的无条件联系极大地减少了收入不平等。第二, 用税收来控制民主具有减少收入不平等的净效应。总体而言, 本研究表明, 强大的民主制度能为收入再分配战略加强税收制度, 从而促进收入平等。本研究与实现下列目标有关:可持续发展目标1(减贫)、可持续发展目标10(减少不平等)、可持续发展目标16(强大机构)。
This paper conducts a comparative analysis at EU Member States level focused on public funding mechanisms fo r the cultural sector over the period 2014-2019 and in the year of the onset of the ...COVID-19 pandemic (2020). The analysis conducted and presented in this paper highlights the fact that the vast majority of EU Member States have stepped up their efforts to finance the cultural sector, starting from the lessons learned during the 2008 economic and financial crisis. Therefore, the states continued to implement increasingly coherent cultural policies, as evidenced by the fact that the states that used a mix of financial instruments in 2020 to combat imbalances in the cultural sector are generally the states that in 2014-2019 recorded a relative increase in general government expenditure on cultural services. The paper highlights the development pattern of cultural Europe with two ends, on the North-Center-South axis, by maintaining the gaps in terms of funding for the cultural sector, between the Northern and Central EU states, on the one hand, and the Southern and Eastern states of the EU, on the other hand.
The operation of a toll road typically involves an economic activity for which State aid rules apply. However, if the construction and operation of the road infrastructure is bundled and they are ...tendered out together, they usually fall outside the State aid regime. The reason for it lies in the fact that the use of competitive procurement procedures aim to increase the efficiency of public expenditure and to ensure a level playing field for private operators to compete for public contracts. Nevertheless, based on the European Commission’s decisional practice, it transpires that an economic advantage for a concession holder cannot be ruled out automatically, in particular when there are amendments made to the original agreement. On the example of the Autostrada Wielkopolska S.A. case, critical State aid issues are discussed, among others, the application of State aid rules to public financing of infrastructure, the amendments made to a concession contract in the light of the risk assignment problem, as well as the existence of State aid in the form of overcompensation for a concession holder. The considerations are carried out on the canvas of a concrete case; however, they are enriched by the analysis of relevant legal provisions as well as conclusions from the EU courts and the European Commission decisions made in similar cases.
In this paper, we review literature on the financing of primary and secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with a view to contributing some insights about the extent to which the region can ...achieve the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4). At the heart of SDG 4 of the UN 2030 Agenda is the desire to achieve equity in education provision to the extent that no one is left behind. Leaving no one behind in this context suggests a pro-poor approach to educational financing. The SSA region lags behind other developing regions regarding investing in education and is, therefore, under threat of failing to meet the very ambitious aims of SDG 4, hence this focus. We examine the literature through a three-pronged conceptual framework, including public, external aid, and private education financing. Findings show that, ceteris paribus, SSA will not have adequate financial resources to meet SDG 4 requirements. Public education financing, which remains the major source, needs to increase significantly. For this to happen, SSA countries’ economies must necessarily grow.
Candidates for municipal office collect millions of dollars to fund their campaigns. While previous research about local fundraising coalitions investigates the role of specific interest groups—for ...example, real estate professionals and developers—and donors outside the political jurisdiction, there has been little systematic investigation of individual donors classified by the size of their contribution or their geographic concentration within the city itself. In this article, we draw on administrative records of campaign contributions from the 2013 Seattle elections to answer two questions about the financing of municipal elections. First, drawing on research from federal elections, we ask whether candidates build fundraising coalitions comprised primarily of small-dollar donors or whether they rely heavily on high-dollar donors to fund their campaigns. In Seattle, we find that only one-fifth of donors in the mayoral election contributed at least $500, but their contributions account for 55% of the money raised in the election. Next, we ask how concentrated campaign contributors are within Seattle neighborhoods. Candidates collected nearly 25% of their funds from the wealthiest 10% of neighborhoods. By pointing to an outsized role for high-dollar donors and donors concentrated in affluent neighborhoods, this article identifies a critical dimension of representational distortion in municipal elections. In doing so, it opens a new window into the local campaign finance system—an aspect of our political process that has been largely overlooked in research on campaigns and elections.
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