•Institutional voids and contrasting cultural norms encourage different SME networking behaviour.•In Egypt, SMEs tend to cope through seeking strong personal ties with institutions; in UK weak ...business-like ties are normal.•In order to understand the responses of small internationalizing firms to domestic institutional condirions, an analysis is required that (1) combines institutional and cultural referents, and (2) crosses macro (culture, level of development), meso (institution) and micro (firm) levels of analysis.
This paper reports a comparative qualitative study of how decision-makers in internationalizing SMEs respond to relevant institutions in their domestic environment through networking activity. Twenty SMEs are compared respectively from a developing economy (Egypt) and a developed economy (UK). The two countries contrast both in the effectiveness of their institutional support for SMEs and in their cultural norms towards network relationships. Substantial differences are found between the two national samples in SME decision makers’ networking behaviour in response to specific institutional conditions. The links between institutional conditions, national cultural norms and SME networking responses are explicated in a new theoretical model.
This study applies a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to data from the Global Innovation Index (GII). Building on the National Innovation System's approach, this study posits that a country ...can achieve high innovation performance via several combinations of causal conditions. These conditions are the five input enablers of GII: institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, and business sophistication. By defining two subsamples of countries (high-income and low-income), this study finds that several causal combinations of conditions lead to high innovation performance in both groups. In order to obtain better innovation performance, the low-income countries show more multifaceted solutions. These results indicate that none of the conditions is necessary for predicting high innovation performance in both samples. Additionally, in the low-income group, none of the conditions, individually, is sufficient to predict higher innovation performance, while in the high-income group the infrastructure and human capital and research conditions, on their own, are sufficient to obtain better innovation performance. These results indicate that the political decision-making processes required for improving the level of innovation need to be different for each group of countries.
Researching the past empirical studies, we find that the empirical results of using data from the same or similar stages of economic development tend to be very close; however, there will be some ...discrepancies when comparing the empirical results of data samples at different stages of development. In order to explain this phenomenon, a theoretical analysis is made on the regional differences in the impact of population ageing on national saving. By analysing the areas considered in this paper as being in different stages of economic development, the combined effects of population ageing on the national saving rate are different. In order to verify the above conclusions, the thresholds and threshold effects are estimated and tested through the threshold model. The results show that the impact of population ageing on the savings rate will be different due to different levels of economic development. When per capita income is below the threshold of 9001.69, population ageing has a greater negative impact on the national savings rate. When per capita income is above the threshold of 9001.69, the negative impact of population ageing on the national saving rate is smaller.
In recent years, healthcare has become a fundamental pillar of the level of well-being of any society. With the aim of improving the lives of countries and societies, in 2015 the United Nations (UN) ...approved the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out in the Agenda are health and well-being (O3) and the reduction of inequalities (O10). The general objective of this paper is to analyse the impact that the level of socioeconomic development, as well as the evolution of inequalities, have had on public spending on health in European Union countries. The research methodology is based on the application of a regression model and statistical techniques such as sigma convergence, beta convergence and the Gini index. We can see that the levels of public spending on health per capita, the level of socio-economic development and the degree of inequality are closely related in these countries. For this reason, we suggest maintaining sustainable economic growth to reduce the economic disparities between EU countries, and also the current differences in public spending on health per capita.
The coordination of health service supply and regional economy is an integral path to promote China's prosperity.
Based on the coupling mechanism of health service supply and regional economy, we ...sampled the data from 30 provinces in China from 2009 to 2021 in this study and constructed the evaluation index system. Additionally, we calculated the coupling coordination degree (HED) of the two through the coupling coordination degree model. We further used the kernel density estimation, Moran's I index, and spatial β convergence model to assess the dynamic evolution trends, spatial aggregation effect, and spatial convergence characteristics of coupling coordination.
(1) HED in China showed a rising trend during the study period but with large regional differences, forming a gradient distribution pattern of "high in the east and low in the west." (2) The results of Kernel density estimation show that HED has formed a gradient differentiation phenomenon within each region in China. (3) HED has modeled spatial clustering characteristics during the study period, with high-value clusters mainly appearing in the eastern region and low-value clusters appearing in the northwestern region. (4) There are absolute β-convergence and conditional β-convergence trends in HED in China and the three major regions during the study period, but there is an obvious regional heterogeneity in the control factors. The research provides a reference for accurately implementing policies according to different levels of health service supply and economic development, in addition to narrowing the regional differences of the coupling coordination between the regional economy and health service supply.
As an important measure of reform of the central environmental supervision, the National Specially Monitored Firms program has a significant impact on enterprise pollution control. However, there are ...few studies that have systematically studied the mechanism of this system on enterprise environmental performance. Based on the quasi natural experiment of the National Specially Monitored Firms program, this article uses the emission data of industrial enterprises from 2001 to 2009 to investigate the impact of the central environmental supervision on on corporate environmental performance by using the DID method. It is found that the National Specially Monitored Firms program has significantly improved the corporate environmental performance of the monitored enterprises. Heterogeneity analysis finds that when compared with enterprises with a higher degree of financing constraints, export enterprises, and enterprises with a lower level of economic development in the region, the implementation of the National Specially Monitored Firms program has a more significant effect on improving the environmental performance of enterprises with a lower degree of financing constraints, domestic enterprises, and enterprises with a higher level of economic development in the region. The mechanism test shows that improving the enterprise environmental protection equipment investment is not the only intermediary mechanism for the National Specially Monitored Firms program to improve corporate environmental performance. The conclusions of this article are not only conducive in optimizing the environmental governance methods but also inspirational for monitoring practices in other fields.
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