Government Policy Responses Research Articles

The Job Loss Insurance Program as a Government Policy Response to Address the Impact of National Economic Fluctuations and Layoffs

Fluctuations in the national economy caused by several things, such as a decline in economic growth, the global economic crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic, often lead to layoffs (PHK). Layoffs have various negative impacts on life, such as depression, mental health, financial problems, social relationships, decreased physical health, and impacts on careers. The JKP program is one of the policies to overcome these negative impacts. The JKP program is designed to provide financial support, job training, and access to labor market information for laid-off workers, with the aim of reducing the social and economic impact of layoffs and helping workers return to the labor market with better skills. The aim of this research is to explain the JKP program as a response to government policy in overcoming the negative impacts of layoffs. This research uses a qualitative and quantitative descriptive approach. The implementation of the JKP program has shown positive results, such as increasing people's purchasing power and contributing to economic recovery. However, there are several challenges in its implementation, including infrastructure, technical problems and uneven socialization. Periodic program evaluation is needed to address this problem and ensure the long-term effectiveness of the JKP program. This article also emphasizes the importance of collaboration between government and industry in improving the relevance and quality of vocational training. It is hoped that the JKP program can continue to adapt and improve protection for workers in Indonesia, thereby providing better economic and social stability

State Contexts for a Public Health Emergency: The Divergence of Politics and Administration in COVID-19 Vaccination Rates

Amid the array of challenges prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the policy response of governments proved vital. Different states in the U.S. pursued varied policy approaches that demonstrated distinct divergences in impact. Particularly, contrasting state contexts produced markedly assorted frameworks for the delivery of public health services, which indicate potential effects for COVID-19 policy implementation. Using the rates of COVID-19 vaccination as a measure of policy execution, the purpose of this study is to examine the political and administrative influences contributing to differences in COVID-19 public health policy outcomes among the states in the U.S. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models included data sources of nationally representative information pertaining to state public health attributes of politics and administration during the height of the pandemic and vaccine campaign. The findings suggest that state political leadership and fiscal capacity display significant associations with COVID-19 vaccination disparities, while other administrative indicators did not. The results signal important policy implications for the politics–administration dynamic within the COVID-19 pandemic and offer further understanding toward the roles of federalism and governance in future public health emergencies.

Coronanomics: Implications of COVID-19 Pandemic in The Economy in Indonesia

Coronanomics is the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the macro economy which includes several macro indicators, namely data on economic growth, inflation rates, interest rates, consumption, and investment in Indonesia as well as government policy responses in overcoming the Covid-19 pandemic. This study uses a literature study by taking data from several literatures that support the research process. This study uses quantitative data that is described qualitatively to analyze the impact on the macro economy. Data collection techniques used by listening and analyzing data by means of data reduction, data display, and an overview about the literature to be developed in this study. The results showed that the Indonesian economy in the third quarter of 2021 increased by 3.51% (yoy), although it slowed down compared to the previous quarter's achievements, household consumption grew by 1.03% (yoy). Investment growth slowed by 3.74% (yoy), supported by construction investment. The government's consumption performance was 0.66% (yoy), in line with the reallocation of spending to accelerate the national economic recovery program, including the handling of the Covid-19 delta. The inflation rate in October 2021 was 0.93%, a decrease compared to inflation in 2020 of 1.66%. The government's policy responses that have been carried out in order to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic are divided into two, namely through the Covid-19 Handling Policy and the National Economic Recovery Policy (PC-PEN).

Government’s responses and performance of stock markets during COVID-19: Evidence from ASEAN stock markets

This study aims to investigate the effects of government interventions on stock market performance of six countries within the ASEAN region that experienced the greatest impact during the COVID-19 pandemic in two aspects: stock returns and stock volatilities. The paper uses government response index and its components, including stringency index, containment and health index and economic support index as proxies for government actions. The paper first applies the GARCH(1,1) model to extract the volatilities of the studied stock markets. Subsequently, a panel regression model with fixed random effect is adopted to analyze how the performance of stock markets is influenced by government policy responses. The empirical results suggest that government’s interventions exert positive, significant effect on the stock returns of ASEAN markets. Additionally, the stock markets are more volatile under the implementation of restriction policies and containment and health policies, whereas the economic support policies are associated with decreased volatilities. The overall effect of government response policies also boosts the volatility of ASEAN stock markets. Our findings provide essential and reliable evidence for policymakers and stakeholders to alleviate the profound impact of the widespread COVID-19 outbreak.

Examining Monetary Policy Measures and Their Impacts during and after the COVID Era: OECD Perspectives

Governments worldwide implemented various fiscal and monetary measures to address the adverse impacts of COVID-19 on their economies. The paper aims to examine the changes in the monetary policy measures due to COVID-19 and their impact on macroeconomic variables. To explore this relationship, this study utilizes fortnightly data from 2020 to 2023 on the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. The study employs a Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to analyze the effects of the monetary policy responses of the OECD governments, and the obtained results reveal that within OECD countries, the prevailing trend of lower interest rate policies emerged during the pandemic. This policy approach yielded a dual effect: lowering both output growth and inflation rates, while concurrently exacerbating unemployment rates throughout the COVID-19 period. Consequently, it is clear that monetary policies have played a pivotal role in facilitating the recovery from a profound economic shock such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the significant economic repercussions of a pandemic and the crucial role that monetary policy plays in sustaining economic stability, the apparent lack of attention underscores the urgent necessity for additional discourse on this vital subject.

‘Ski masks’, spectacles and solidarity: Mainstream Irish media representations of housing activists and activisms

This article demonstrates how Irish mainstream media supports the neo-liberal policy responses of successive governments in relation to housing through a particular focus on how housing organizers, activists and movements are framed. We suggest here that this framing facilitates the maintenance of binaries of both ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ homelessness and the associated actions which challenge the housing crisis, which in turn compromises the ability for broad-based coalitions of solidarity to be mobilized.

Impact of COVID-19 Travel Subsidies on Stock Market Returns: Evidence from Japanese Tourism Companies

This study examines stock market response (SMR) to the Japanese tourism industry (TI) after the government’s announcement of travel subsidies (TRSs) during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, using a sample comprising 80 listed Japanese firms in the TI and an event study method (ESM) to determine the impact of government policy responses (GPRs) to the pandemic. This study found that investors in the TI reacted positively to the announcement of subsidies; this positive effect persisted for 50 trading days after the announcement but was weaker for transportation firms. The results suggest that TRSs are important for the TI, with a stronger link to travel-related firms, such as airlines and travel agencies, hotels, and amusement services. However, investors in the TI reacted negatively to policies that directly addressed the pandemic, such as social distance policies (SDPs). These results are robustly confirmed when we measure abnormal returns by using a three-factor model. The results offer useful insights for policymakers and practitioners aiming to mitigate economic loss from disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reform and reverberation: Australian aged care policy changes and the unintended consequences for allied health.

Allied health has a valuable role in providing services to people living in residential aged care. The recent Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety included several important recommendations relating to the nursing, personal care, and allied health workforce and the care that they provide. The purpose of this paper is to review these recommendations and the Australian Government's policy responses and explore the emerging changes in allied health service provision in residential aged care. Data from the four available Quarterly Financial Reports from the 2022-2023 financial year were extracted and analysed in relation to staff costs and time per person per day across personal care, nursing, and allied health workers. Supplementary data sources including the 2020 Aged Care Workforce Census were accessed to provide contextual data relating to individual allied health professions, including occupational therapy. The analysis shows a modest increase in median registered nurse minutes per person per day, and cost per person per day, from the first to second quarter, and again in the third and fourth. By contrast, median time and cost for allied health declined. From 5.6minutes per person per day in the first quarter, reported allied health minutes fell to 4.6minutes per person per day in the second quarter, an 18% decrease, and by the fourth quarter was 4.3minutes per person per day. This is just over half the Australian average of 8minutes reported to the RCACQS in 2019. Under recent residential aged care reforms, aged care providers have regulatory incentives to concentrate their financial resources on meeting the mandated care hours for registered nurses, enrolled nurses, personal care workers, and assistants in nursing. These same reforms do not mandate minutes of allied health services. Although providers of residential aged care in Australia continue to employ and value allied health, we argue that mandating care minutes for personal and nursing care without mandating the provision of allied health creates a perverse incentive whereby access to allied health services is unintentionally reduced.

Residual neural network with spatiotemporal attention integrated with temporal self-attention based on long short-term memory network for air pollutant concentration prediction

Accurate prediction of air pollutant concentrations can be effective in controlling and preventing air pollution, which is crucial for both the government's policy response and the public's reasonable ability to avoid air pollution. In this study, we propose a model based on the principle of big data correlation and deep learning techniques for predicting the concentration of air pollutant concentrations. The proposed model, named STARes-SaLSTM, consists of a residual neural network with spatiotemporal attention (STAResNet) and a temporal self-attention based on long short-term memory network (SaLSTM). The spatiotemporal attention module in STAResNet enhances the original input information by weighting it in both spatial and temporal dimensions, meanwhile the features of the spatial distribution of pollutant and meteorological information across many cities are deeply extracted using ResNet. A novel self-attention method known as temporal self-attention is developed to extract the temporal dependency of air pollutants. LSTM is used as a sequence encoder in this temporal attention method to calculate queries, keys, and values to acquire a more comprehensive temporal dependence than is possible with normal self-attention. The STARes-SaLSTM model successfully predicts air pollution concentrations in the target city for the future by extracting spatiotemporal correlation of feature sequence. In comparison to previous neural network models and conventional methods, the model increases the accuracy of pollutant concentration prediction. The suggested prediction model works well for the one to 3 h prediction job, with a root mean square error (RMSE) ranging from 6.716 to 11.648. Furthermore, even for the 1–24 h prediction assignment, we executed multi-scale prediction in the target city and obtained a reasonable performance, with an average RMSE value of 20.576.

COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance and Associated Factors among General Population

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to examine COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among general population in Korea and to identify variables affecting the vaccine acceptance.Methods: Data for the study were taken from the 2021 Korean General Social Survey which collected them from a national sample of 1,205 adults aged 18 and up who lived in households in Korea using face-to-face interviews with a structured questionnaire. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, bivariate analysis and multiple regression analysis.Results: The rate of COVID-19 vaccination was 73.1% and the mean score of vaccine acceptance was 4.7 on a 5-point scale. Among the variables in the study, age, education, experience of flu vaccination, wearing a mask and evaluation of government policy responses to COVID-19 appeared to be salient in predicting the COVID-19 vaccine acceptance.Conclusions: Policies and programs to promote COVID-19 vaccination need to develop with consideration of various factors including sociodemographic characteristics, health behaviors, attitudes and perception to COVID-19 among general people.

The Fraser Government and South Korea: Human Rights in Foreign Policy, 1975–81

This study uses recently declassified documents to analyse the Fraser government's human rights policy towards South Korea. It demonstrates that when the Fraser government made its first human rights representation to the South Korean government in August 1976, it was under limited public pressure to do so, and human rights issues were of limited importance in the bilateral relationship. By late 1980, however, when political opposition figure Kim Dae Jung was sentenced to death, human rights considerations dominated Australian foreign policy towards South Korea, and public pressure on the Fraser government to try and prevent Kim's execution was substantial. The Fraser government's policy response to Kim's case was in part a reaction to public pressure, human rights considerations were also involved, but perhaps the most substantial factor driving the government's policy response was that Kim's execution was sure to sour the bilateral relationship and jeopardise the economic relationship. Overall, South Korea was a place where the Fraser government grappled with key questions about how to pursue human rights in foreign policy and where it had to address a human rights issue that had the capacity to seriously disrupt bilateral relations.

TÜRKİYE VE ALMANYA’DAKİ GEÇİCİ KORUMA REJİMLERİ: BOSNALI, SURİYELİ VE UKRAYNALI MÜLTECİLERİ KORUMA REJİMLERİNİN KARŞILAŞTIRILMASI

1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees provides protection and rights for those who are recognized as refugees under its definition. Alternative forms like temporary protection have emerged, as a short-term strategy to secure the urgent needs of refugees in the event of a mass influx. Indeed, it reveals how states pragmatically ignore the protection regime of the convention. Germany, hosting Europe’s largest refugee population inside the European Union (EU) and Türkiye, hosting world’s largest refugee population beyond the EU has implemented temporary protection status as a keystone asylum policy. In this context, the study brings together the literature on externalization of the EU asylum policy and integration by comparing the evolution of the temporary protection regimes in Germany and Türkiye. To do this, the policy responses of Turkish and German governments to the refugee crisis in Bosnia, Syria and Ukraine are analysed. The research eventually provides an analytical framework to aid policy makers in adapting an accurate asylum policy in both countries as well as in the EU. Consequently, the notion of equal solidarity and human-centric approach should be rethought, when designing asylum policy in both countries as well as in the EU.

Economic Development Trends in Africa: A Case Study of South Africa Before, During, and After the COVID-19 Pandemic

The global economy has been significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and Africa has not been spared from its widespread repercussions. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the economic development trends in Africa, with a particular focus on South Africa, across three distinct phases: pre-pandemic, during the pandemic, and post-pandemic. Utilizing the combination of textual analysis and secondary data, the paper delves into both the macro and micro economic impact of these phases on the South African economy. The study aims to shed light on the resilience and vulnerabilities of the South African economy in the face of global challenges such as trade tensions, geopolitical uncertainties, and the unprecedented health crisis brought about by the pandemic. It also explores the government's policy responses and their effectiveness in mitigating the economic fallout. Furthermore, the paper examines the sectoral impacts, highlighting how key industries like mining, manufacturing, and services have been affected and are recovering. By offering a multi-dimensional analysis, this paper seeks to provide valuable insights for policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders interested in the economic development and recovery of South Africa in a rapidly changing global landscape.

When should DIY have a localized healthcare waste management system?

Purpose: The 2018 healthcare waste management crisis catalyzed a critical review of the concerns expressed by the Health Office (dinkes) and healthcare facilities regarding healthcare waste management in the Special Region of Yogyakarta (DIY). Due to this crisis, the Ministry of Health hired Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) to look into potential solutions and promote DIY government policy responses. This paper examines the management strategy during crisis times and possible alternative solutions.
 Methods: This paper uses focused group discussions reports involving separate groups of (1) environmental health officials from community health centers, (2) hospitals, (3) environment health officials of district health authorities, and (4) cross-sectoral province officials in the Yogyakarta Special Region. It is part of a project 'A case study of strengthening regional-based medical waste management model', fund from the Environmental Health Directorate, Directorate General of Public Health, Ministry of Health (Project KN 01.03/6.1/0198/2019).
 Result: A simulation of policy options based on health facility managers suggests that a province-based system is the most profitable in the long term for DIY, with several possible options. The national policy roadmap was considered inadequate to respond to DIY's urgent local needs. Furthermore, the series of meetings succeeded in forming an informal forum between health facilities, provincial health offices, and associations of hospital environmental sanitation experts, monitoring medical waste management.
 Conclusion: The 2018 medical waste management crisis led to the formulation of policy response choices tailored to the capacity of DIY. These choices considered the expenditures and legal sanctions faced by healthcare facilities and the economic value of a region-based waste system for local government authorities. This comprehensive approach highlights the importance of local capacity. It needs to shape effective and sustainable medical waste management policies, underscoring the necessity of region-specific strategies in the face of national health crises.

Prediction of Pollutant Concentration Based on Spatial-Temporal Attention, ResNet and ConvLSTM.

Accurate and reliable prediction of air pollutant concentrations is important for rational avoidance of air pollution events and government policy responses. However, due to the mobility and dynamics of pollution sources, meteorological conditions, and transformation processes, pollutant concentration predictions are characterized by great uncertainty and instability, making it difficult for existing prediction models to effectively extract spatial and temporal correlations. In this paper, a powerful pollutant prediction model (STA-ResConvLSTM) is proposed to achieve accurate prediction of pollutant concentrations. The model consists of a deep learning network model based on a residual neural network (ResNet), a spatial-temporal attention mechanism, and a convolutional long short-term memory neural network (ConvLSTM). The spatial-temporal attention mechanism is embedded in each residual unit of the ResNet to form a new residual neural network with the spatial-temporal attention mechanism (STA-ResNet). Deep extraction of spatial-temporal distribution features of pollutant concentrations and meteorological data from several cities is carried out using STA-ResNet. Its output is used as an input to the ConvLSTM, which is further analyzed to extract preliminary spatial-temporal distribution features extracted from the STA-ResNet. The model realizes the spatial-temporal correlation of the extracted feature sequences to accurately predict pollutant concentrations in the future. In addition, experimental studies on urban agglomerations around Long Beijing show that the prediction model outperforms various popular baseline models in terms of accuracy and stability. For the single-step prediction task, the proposed pollutant concentration prediction model performs well, exhibiting a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 9.82. Furthermore, even for the pollutant prediction task of 1 to 48 h, we performed a multi-step prediction and achieved a satisfactory performance, being able to achieve an average RMSE value of 13.49.

Public health restrictions, directives, and measures in Arctic countries in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Beginning January of 2020, COVID-19 cases detected in Arctic countries triggered government policy responses to stop transmission and limit caseloads beneath levels that would overwhelm existing healthcare systems. This review details the various restrictions, health mandates, and transmission mitigation strategies imposed by governments in eight Arctic countries (the United States, Canada, Greenland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, and Russia) during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, through 31 January 2021s31 January 2021. We highlight formal protocols and informal initiatives adopted by local communities in each country, beyond what was mandated by regional or national governments. This review documents travel restrictions, communications, testing strategies, and use of health technology to track and monitor COVID-19 cases. We provide geographical and sociocultural background and draw on local media and communications to contextualise the impact of COVID-19 emergence and prevention measures in Indigenous communities in the Arctic. Countries saw varied case rates associated with local protocols, governance, and population. Still, almost all regions maintained low COVID-19 case rates until November of 2020. This review was produced as part of an international collaboration to identify community-driven, evidence-based promising practices and recommendations to inform pan-Arctic collaboration and decision making in public health during global emergencies.

A novel multivariate approach for COVID-19 pandemic prediction in the United States

Since December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused enormous economic and social disorder. The analysis and forecasts of pandemic has received considerable attention worldwide. Previous research has primarily focused on predictions based merely on historical data and thus has been unable to identify the effect of external factors such as government policy responses. This study aims to develop a multivariate VECM model to predict the change in confirmed cases with Government Stringency Index taken into consideration. This study carried out exponential smoothing and VECM cointegration test using COVID-19 related data of the United States. By exploring the results of the two forecasters, it becomes evident that VECM has shown a much higher accuracy than Exponential Smoothing in the long run. In particular, when huge changes of tendencies in confirmed cases occur, the improvement appears to be more obvious.

The impact of COVID-19 government policy on the international wine trade

To control the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments implemented various restrictive policies, such as stay-at-home orders and restrictions on internal movement, which had adverse effects on consumption and, consequently, on international trade. This was observed even for products intensively traded and minimally impacted in terms of production, such as wine. Thus, to work towards a better awareness of future crises, this study assesses the impact of government policy responses to COVID-19 on the international wine trade. A gravity model, a benchmark approach for studying the determinants of trade, is estimated using monthly data for 20 exporting countries and 214 potential importing countries. The findings suggest that, ceteris paribus, the value of wine export flows was inversely related to the intensity of government policy response in importing countries due to lower demand provoked by restrictive measures. This effect was considerably reduced, however, concerning wines coming from the Old World, which are inferred to be more resilient, a factor primarily attributed to their higher share of wines exported with geographical indications. On the other hand, only the exports from Old World countries were negatively influenced by restrictions on internal movements in the exporting country, which reflects a business model with a complex supply chain in which several intermediaries are involved, thus weakening the direct linkage between wine producers and consumers.

Constructing a crisis: how Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews made meaning of COVID-19

ABSTRACT The state of Victoria, Australia experienced some of the longest and strictest COVID-19 lockdowns in the world, and among the highest peaks of COVID-19 cases in the country. Despite this, the Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has retained his leadership position, as well as public support in the polls and high compliance with COVID-19 restrictions which resulted in Victoria eliminating two waves of the virus over 2020. This article investigates how Andrews supported his government's policy response to COVID-19 by attempting to construct the reality of crisis in the public consciousness. Through a thematic analysis of Andrews’ press conferences, media releases, and social media posts, it is found that a campaign of language, imagery, metaphor and narrative framed the pandemic as a crisis that was urgent, but nonetheless familiar and manageable.

Assessment of the impact of government response measures on the spread of COVID-19: panel data evidence for 50 countries

This article investigates the impact of Government’s response measures to new COVID-19 cases. This is proxied by a stringency index of 50 countries from April 2020 to March 2022. Our World in Data COVID-19 dataset was utilised employing several panel econometrics methods. This article fills a gap in empirical research by employing a range of econometric methods over an extended period and countries. The article provides the basis for the formulation and implementation of government response measures or policies to other major public health events that may occur in the future. The research found a positive association between Government’s response measures and new cases initially and in the long term and a significant short-term error correction component. This indicates an incremental and repeatable implementation approach, proposing a cyclical or lagged relationship where response measures reach a level of stringency after some time, then induce a decline in new cases. The timing, speed, and stringency of implementation of the government policy response measures are crucial in our understanding of the relationship or link between the government policy response measures and new COVID-19 cases.