High Levels Of Employment Research Articles

Глобальні міста в суб’єктній диспозиції Smart-економіки

Strengthening the intellectualization of the economy is an ongoing process that is rapidly accelerating in the new century. One of the important manifestations of this is the formation of Smart-economy, "smart" economy. An important aspect of the study of Smart-economy is to determine its subjective structure and assess the relationships and interdependence of participants in economic relations. New participants in global economic relations are global cities, for the assessment of which at the present stage are used not only indicators of economic efficiency, but also indicators of intellectual economy and well-being. The article identifies three main components of the Smart-economy: smart growth, which involves the development of the economy through the implementation of knowledge and innovation; stable and sustainable growth, which is formed through the rational use of available resources and increase the efficiency of these processes, which in turn can contribute to increasing the competitiveness of the economy; intensive growth provided by the achievement of a high level of employment, social and territorial capacity and cohesion. The main forms of manifestation of Smart-economy are defined: digitalization; institutionalization; management; greening; socialization; urbanization. The main elements of assessing the quality of global cities are the business environment, human capital, taxation, reputation, infrastructure, financial center development. The article analyzes the disposition of global cities in the structure of Smart-economy, criteria and indicators of their analysis, identifies the place of components of intellectualization and the current level of development of global cities. It is determined that at the present stage there is a formation not only of "global" cities, but also of "international" ones, which have a significant impact on the development of the region and determine its key trends.

The rise of part-time employment in the great recession: Its causes and macroeconomic effects

During the Great Recession, the U.S. economy witnessed a substantial rise in part-time employment for a sustained period. We extend the New Keynesian unemployment model by Galí et al. (2012) to allow substitutions between full-time and part-time labor, and estimate the model’s parameters by using the Bayesian method. In our model, households and firms can optimally allocate full-time and part-time labor, and disturbances exist in part-time labor supply (household disutility from part-time labor) and part-time labor demand (firms’ efficiency to use part-time labor). As for the Great Recession, the initial increase in part-time employment at the outset of the financial crisis is mostly explained by the rise of the risk premia; the persistently high level of part-time employment in the later period is mainly explained by an exogenous increase in part-time labor supply. A part-time labor supply shock also explains a significant portion of slow recovery in the gross wage during the recession, as the shock lowers the part-time wage and the proportion of full-time workers in total employment. Notably, the results from our model suggest that though the transition from full-time to part-time jobs contributed to mitigating the sharp contraction in total employment and labor force during the Great Recession, it played only a limited role in relieving recessionary pressure.

An Analysis of the Performance of European Union Countries in the Light of Europe 2020 Strategy Indicators

In this paper, an analysis of the Europe 2020 strategy indicators has been carried out. The strategy defined three priorities for European countries: Smart, Inclusive and Sustainable growth. These goals (developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation, fostering high employment levels, and promoting a more resource-efficient and greener economy) were measured by eight headline indicators, related to employment, research and innovation, renewables and energy, education and poverty. For each indicator, a target has been set, and the eight indicators are subject to regular statistical monitoring and reporting. Europe 2020 is perhaps not a complete set of indicators for measuring the progress of societies and the quality of life of their citizens, but it is a very important recognition of European institutions that GDP alone is not enough and that it must necessarily be integrated with measures that take into account equity and sustainability. The paper analyses the trends of the Europe 2020 indicators, considering the target reached or not, synthesizing the results using an Alkire-Foster method and clustering the 27 European countries, in order to highlight convergence processes among the Member States (MSs) in the ten years taken into account by the Strategy. After almost10 years, the EU has not reached most of the targets set in 2010, and many MSs are well behind schedule.

Who Is Still Travelling by Public Transport during COVID-19? Socioeconomic Factors Explaining Travel Behaviour in Stockholm Based on Smart Card Data

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed travel behaviour and reduced the use of public transport throughout the world, but the reduction has not been uniform. In this study we analyse the propensity to stop traveling by public transport during COVID-19 for the holders of 1.8 million smart cards in Stockholm, Sweden, for the spring and autumn of 2020. We suggest two models for explaining the change in travel pattern, linking socioeconomic data per area and travel data with the probability to stop traveling. The first model analyses the impact of the socioeconomic factors: age; income; education level; gender; housing type; population density; country of origin; and employment level. The results show that decreases in public transport use are linked to areas with a population of high socioeconomic status (e.g. income levels, owned houses and high employment levels). The second model groups the investigated areas into five distinct clusters based on the socioeconomic data: Rural, Working Class, Impoverished, Garden Suburbs and Central. During spring, residents in the Rural group were most likely to continue traveling, followed by the Impoverished, Working Class, Garden Suburbs and Central. During fall the differences between the groups diminished, and especially the Impoverished group reduced their public transport use to a similar level as the Garden Suburbs group. The results show that socioeconomic status affect the change in behaviour during the pandemic and that exposure to the virus is determined by citizens’ socioeconomic class. Furthermore, the results can guide policy into tailoring public transport supply to where the need is, instead of assuming that e.g. crowding is equally distributed within the public transport system in the event of a pandemic.

The regional perspective of the knowledge-based economy and Europe 2020

In this research work, the author focuses on the analysis of the regional perspective of the knowledge-based economy and Europe 2020. The Europe 2020 programme is the European Union’s growth strategy for the coming decade and especially for new budget perspective 2014–2020. In a changing world, representatives of the EU want it to become a smart, sustainable, and inclusive economy. These three mutually reinforcing priorities should help the EU and its Member States deliver high levels of employment, productivity, and social cohesion. Concretely, the Union has set five ambitious objectives — on employment, innovation, education, social inclusion, and climate/energy — to be reached by 2020. Each Member State has adopted its own national targets in each of these areas. Concrete actions at EU and national levels underpin this strategy. The main objective of the research task is to give a comprehensive analysis of the knowledge-based economy from the regional perspective and the program Europe 2020. The particular main concern is the increase of the importance of the knowledge-based economy in the region, the Triple Helix model constructed advantages, programme Europe 2020 and financial instrument of this programme — Horizon 2020.

Insects and Their Products as a Potential Source of Food, Feed and Economic Security: A Review

Due to many ways by which they are exploited, insects and their products could be a very big business. They are sold for agricultural protection, crop pollination, as well as human, livestock and pet nutrition. In addition, their products are sold for pharmaceuticals, health, and the implements for research, art works and a host of other uses. This review focused on commercialization of insects and their products with a view of sharing existing knowledge on global commerce of various insects and their products. Available literature revealed that there was an increase in demand for edible insects in the United States of America and prices were as high as $150 kg-1. Similarly, between 2010 and 2015, animal feed market in the United Kingdom grew at 3.5% annually and is currently worth £5 billion. Because of its scarcity, high demand, and recognition of its healing properties, royal jelly, one of the most sought after from bee products commands astronomical price internationally. In addition, no any other industry could generate high level of employment as sericulture, especially in rural areas where it takes 11 workdays to produce a Kg of raw silk. The contribution insects and their products can give to improve the economy of a developing country such as Nigeria is considerable, but underestimated or neglected. Insects are unlikely to make a major contribution in the near future, but the idea that they are potential source of overcoming the economic problems is not as farfetched as it seemed. Therefore, there is the need to adopt an added value approach to insects and their products and sensitize as well as encourage small-scale farmers, who are disadvantaged in international market participation due to lack of access to information, services, technology or the capacity, to produce larger volumes of quality insect products.

Multinational enterprises, industrial relatedness and employment in European regions

AbstractThis article investigates the link between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and employment in their host regions by cross-fertilising the literature on MNE externalities with the emerging body of research on industrial relatedness. The link between employment and MNE presence in the same and related industries is tested for European regions. The results suggest that cross-sectoral MNE spillovers are mediated through industrial relatedness and that they are positively and significantly associated with higher employment levels, independently of input–output relations. Our results indicate that regions characterised by lower factor prices are likely to benefit the most from the presence of multinationals in terms of employment, but these benefits are concentrated in high knowledge-intensive sectors, potentially fostering inequalities within less-developed economies.

Is There Really a Foreign Ownership Productivity Advantage? Evidence from Nigerian Manufacturing Firms

ABSTRACT The role of foreign ownership of an enterprise in impacting their performance is a vital policy issue for Africa. In this paper, panel data for manufacturing firms is used to investigate that role in Nigeria. After controlling for unobserved firm heterogeneity, inputs simultaneity, measurement errors and possible selection bias, I find that foreign ownership has a positive, but statistically insignificant, effect on total factor productivity (TFP). However, foreign-owned firms operate on a far larger scale than domestic ones, with much higher levels of employment, capital intensity and labour productivity. As it is labour productivity that determines the ability of firms to pay higher wages, the evidence presented in this paper suggests it is their ability to operate at higher scale, rather than having higher TFP, is what characterises foreign-owned firms in Nigeria.

Monitoring of regional labor markets and the main trends of labor underutilization in Russia

PurposeIn the recent two decades, a model of the labor market formed in Russia; it differs from the model that is peculiar for most developed countries. Its specific feature consists in the fact that adaptation to the fluctuations of the economic situation takes place by means of changes in the labor price, not by means of changes in employment and unemployment.Design/methodology/approachSuch model ensures high and stable level of employment and low level of unemployment with significant pro-cyclic fluctuations of wages. Changes that take place in the sphere of employment of population in labor markets and gradual implementation of collection of information in view of the forms of labor activities into the practices of different countries led to the necessity for reconsidering the previously adopted international standards.FindingsThis is due to the fact that the normative documents present the treatment of unemployment without the criterion “job search,” and new indicators of measuring potential labor force and incomplete employment were adopted. The authors analyze the situation of labor underutilization, which is important for characterizing a region of the Russian Federation by the indicator of unmet need for employment.Originality/valueThe offered information could be used for wider monitoring of the labor market, studying the volume and tendencies in the sphere of unemployment, evaluating the problems of integration in the labor market, studying the connection between employment and poverty and forecasting the tendencies.

Methodical Aspects of Indirect Assessment of Household Incomes in Determining the Eligibility for Government Social Support

In present-day Ukraine, a large number of families and individuals are beneficiaries of programs for social support of the population. Economic and political crises, reforms in tariff and social policies, added by the pandemic of coronavirus infection in the latest time, result in the worsening life standards of a considerable share of the population in certain periods of time. In was in 2015–2018 that in some of the quite populated localities social programs covered as many as 70% of the population. This triggered a respective growth in the social support from the central and local budgets. Such situation aggravated the problem of targeting of the government social support, decreasing the number of cases when a social aid is assigned in an improper or baseless manner, and the scopes of fraud in this sphere.
 One of the ways for reforming the system of social support in the present days is to adopt the method of assigning all the categories of support with consideration of incomes and property status of applicants. The property status of families or individuals can be quite accurately measured given the access to the registers containing data on houses, land plots, transport vehicles etc. either possessed or disposed by them. However, given a high level of employment in the informal sector, large scales of the shadow economy and external labor migration, assessment of the actual income level of families constitutes a serious problem. Quite often the stated incomes do not correspond with actual ones, and applicants do not have stimuli to disclose their real life standards. 
 The article’s objective is to expose a methodological approach to operational assessment of potential incomes of applicants and recipients of social support. Approaches based on statistical models of correlation between life standards and sets of households’ or individuals’ characteristics have been constructed and used in many developing countries where the conditions for formation of the population incomes are similar to the ones in Ukraine. The article highlights methodological foundations for building up the models for operational assessment of the population income, with due account to issues of information support to modeling and use of income assessment results. Examples of computations by the proposed models are given.

Oncological Diseases and Social Costs Considerations on Undertaken Health Policy Interventions.

The growing incidence and prevalence of civilization diseases is prompting national and transnational entities to seek instruments that would reverse epidemiological trends. Not without significance is the need to design such solutions that are going to provide an improved relation between the costs incurred to maintain health or recovery and the profit for citizens of continuing to function in good health. In its strategic documents, the European Union indicates the most important development goals in each financial perspective and the tools necessary to achieve them. In the Europe 2020 strategy, a cohesion policy was indicated as an important tool for the implementation of development goals, focusing on supporting activities leading to the equalisation of economic and social conditions in all regions of EU countries. The implementation of one of the three basic priorities of the Europe 2020 strategy, which is inclusive growth—supporting an economy with a high level of employment and ensuring social and territorial cohesion—assumes, among others, that in 2020, the population at risk of poverty and social exclusion will decrease by 20 million and that the employment rate in the EU will increase to 75%. Meeting the objectives will not be possible without a holistic coordinated approach to healthcare at the national and regional level in accordance with the principle of “health in all policies”. It also requires the involvement of various sources of financing, including structural funds. The EU’s prioritisation of the problems related to ensuring decent conditions for achieving health resulted in the mobilisation of structural funds for actions taken in the healthcare sector. Of particular importance are those actions which are taken to prevent, alleviate, and prevent oncological diseases. An additional contribution to undertaking actions aimed at preventing oncological diseases are the high and often neglected social costs incurred by societies. The goal of the article was to identify and evaluate actions taken in this area in Poland. It was achieved by analysing the literature on the subject and statistical data, and conducting induction based on the above-mentioned sources.

Preparing for Successful Transitions between Education and Employment in the Twenty-First Century

The restructuring of the labour market due to the twin forces of rapid technological changes and globalisation has changed the employment landscape, thus, impacting upon transitions between education and employment. Young people seeking to avoid low-skill, low-paid employment have been encouraged to complete high-level educational qualifications before entering the labour market. Thus, youth are experiencing protracted transitions between education and employment and the period during which they are dependent on their families is lengthening. Whether these investments in high-level educational credentials are rewarded in the labour market is the focus of this study. Drawing on survey data collected by the Life Patterns project, I find that the association between having a high level of education and securing permanent full-time employment is weaker than expected. Furthermore, level of education is not associated with levels of job satisfaction. Analysis of comments provided by the participants suggests that there is a level of disenchantment with the breakdown of the relationship between high levels of education and full-time employment.

Trade imbalances within the Euro Area: two regions, two demand regimes

Greater trade integration, convergence in economic performance and a high level of employment among member states: this was why the Euro Area was created. In this respect, the paper analyses the sources of trade imbalances within the Euro Area, focusing on the direct trade relationship—intra-EA trade—between surplus and deficit countries. The econometric evidence based on a VAR/SVAR methodology suggests that asymmetric wage shocks determine asymmetric gains from intra-EA trade, resulting from opposing growth strategies. In addition, the empirical evidence shows that the Euro Area is divided into two economic regions representing different demand regimes: a northern region, which is profit-led and a southern region, which is wage-led. The paper suggests that wage coordination is an essential macroeconomic tool but is insufficient to achieve trade and economic integration given the current state of divergence. Thus, a trade-based transfer mechanism is proposed to restore convergence in the Euro Area.

Adherence to antihypertensive fixed-dose combination among Egyptian patients presenting with essential hypertension

BackgroundMany patients with hypertension require more than one drug to achieve blood pressure control. They are prescribed with fixed-dose combination (FDC) antihypertensive therapy rather than monotherapies. Although it is commonly admitted that the use of FDC may improve compliance to treatment, adherence rates in patients receiving FDCs have not been documented. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the adherence to treatment in patients receiving FDCs of antihypertensive medications in a real-world setting in Egypt.ResultsWe conducted a multi-center cross-sectional study over a period of 1 year from Jan 2017 to Jan 2018. We included patients above 21 years old with essential hypertension who were already prescribed with an FDC of antihypertensive treatment for at least 3-month duration. We assessed the adherence to treatment by patient self-assessment using the Morisky 8-Item Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS 8).This study enrolled 2000 hypertensive Egyptian patients. The mean age of enrolled patients was 55.8 ± 10.9 years. Male to female ratio was 1.08. The mean MMAS score was 6.5 ± 1.9. Our analysis showed that 825 (41.3%) patients reached high adherence score, 523 (26.2%) medium adherence, and 652 (32.6%) low adherence.Furthermore, Male patients showed higher adherence rate than females (56.4% versus 43.6%, p < 0.001). Out of 746 patients with controlled blood pressure (< 140/90), 387 (51.9%) patients were highly adherent to treatment. Higher level of education was significantly associated with high adherence rate; 559 (67.8%) patients were university graduates, 232 (28.1%) had primary/secondary school education, and 34 (4.1%) were illiterate (p < 0.001).Moreover, once daily (99.2%) fixed-dose combination was associated with higher adherence rate than twice regimen daily (0.8%), p = 0.03. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that patients with high level of education, employed patients, and patients with controlled blood pressure have high adherence rate to medication.ConclusionsHigher adherence to medication is associated with high level of education and employment, and it can lead to better blood pressure control. Thus, patient education programs may increase patients’ adherence to their medication.

Sanitary infrastructures and the decline of mortality in Germany, 1877–1913†

AbstractClean water provision is considered crucial for eradicating waterborne diseases. However, the benefits of piped water can be limited in environments characterized by the inadequate storage and disposal of waste. This article studies the impact of waterworks and sewerage on mortality in German cities during the period 1877–1913. The results show that the supply of safe drinking water reduced the number of deaths, although to a lower extent than suggested previously. In the absence of efficient systems of sewage removal, contact with faeces and water contamination created a favourable environment for the spread of enteric ailments, offsetting some of the positive effects of waterworks. Moreover, the study shows that sanitary investments had important heterogeneous effects. First, their impact was markedly lower in municipalities with high levels of economic inequality and employment in the textile sector. Second, cities located in non‐Prussian territories experienced lower declines in mortality following the construction of sanitary infrastructures. The results in this article highlight the importance of analysing public health measures jointly as well as their interaction with local socioeconomic and institutional factors to understand historical progress against ill health and premature death.

Financial Aspects of the Dual Form of Education

The article shows the role of the dual form of education in improving the quality of training of graduates of domestic educational institutions. The need to diversify the sources of funding for the dual form of higher education at the stages of its implementation is emphasized. The dual form of the organization of training by the motivating factor of diversification of sources of financing of education is defined. The content of the principle of duality and the peculiarities of its application in improving the professionalism of the graduate are revealed. The importance of two forms of student learning in different environments is emphasized. The concepts of «dual form of education acquisition» and «dual form of education organization» are described. The correctness of the application in scientific vocabulary and the practical application of the concepts «dual form of education acquisition» and «dual form of education organization» is emphasized. Foreign experience in financing higher education is analyzed. The multidimensionality in the training of specialists in free economic education with the use of academic capital and diversification of sources of funding for education in foreign practice is shown. The foreign experience of training specialists in working professions and financing vocational training is generalized. The benefits of direct and indirect funding of vocational education for the creation of additional jobs in the workplace have been identified. The German experience of formation of the Framework Curriculum by an educational institution and the Framework Plan of Practice with the participation of the employer is given. Emphasis is placed on the incentives and motivation of the mentor in teaching students in the workplace. The results of pilot projects on introduction of the dual form of the organization of training in domestic establishments on preparation of working trades are processed. It is stated a high level of employment of graduates of vocational schools and raise of savings due to increased practical training in the workplace. The peculiarities of realization of the dual form of organization of education and its financing in the Bar College of Transport and Construction are generalized. The necessity of taking into account the work schedule of employers when forming educational institutions’ curricula is proved. A comparison of the ratios of student learning in educational institutions and in workplaces with different models of the dual form of education is conducted. Calculations were made for the educational program with the distribution of loans between domestic institutions of higher education and employers. The main directions of development of educational and professional programs in institutions of higher education are offered. Keywords: forms of education, cost of education, theoretical training, practical training, base of practice, interests of an employer, educational-professional program, principle of duality, dual form of education acquisition, dual form of education organization, models of realization of dual form of education, institutions of higher education, institutions of professional education, financing of education, direct and indirect financing, financing of vocational training, financial support, diversification of sources of financial resources.

Past intensification trajectories of livestock led to mixed social and environmental services

Recent studies highlighted the multiple positive and negative contributions of livestock to society. Livestock production, through its direct and indirect impacts on land use, is an important driver of services provision. Although a few studies provide an account on the multiple services in different livestock systems, there is still an important knowledge gap on the drivers that contribute to the differentiation of services provisioning across areas. We investigated the hypothesis that the current level of services has derived from past intensification trajectories of livestock. The objective of this study was to understand the influences of past changes in livestock, land-use and socio-economic variables on the current provision of social, environmental and cultural services by the livestock sector in France. We combined a long-term country-wide database on livestock intensification between 1938 and 2010 and a database on services provisioning in 2010. We used a set of multivariate methods to simultaneously analyse the changes in livestock intensification from 1938 to 2010 and the current level of services provisioning. Our analysis focused on a set of 60 French departments where livestock play a significant economic role in agricultural production. Our study revealed that the provision of services was spatially structured and based on three groups of departments, characterised by different rates of change in intensification variables. In the first group, ‘Intensive livestock areas’, the high level of employment in the livestock sector was mainly associated with high rates of change in monogastric stocking rates (+1045%) and milk productivity (+451%). In the second group, ‘Extensive livestock areas’, the high levels of environmental and cultural services were mainly associated with moderate rates of change in herbivores stocking rate (+95%) and the stability of grassland area (+13%). In the third group, ‘Transition areas’, the low provision of all services was associated with the decline in livestock due to crop expansion. This study provides knowledge to understand how past changes determined the current contribution of livestock areas in providing differentiated bundles of services, which might help steer the development of the current livestock sector towards more sustainable trajectories.

Nepotism, political competition and overemployment

ABSTRACT We extend the research on nepotism in public institutions by first investigating the determinants of nepotism, then by establishing the association between nepotism levels and overstaffing. We take advantage of novel and uniquely reliable data on levels of nepotism within Lithuanian municipalities to test three expectations: first, we expect to see a higher level of nepotism in municipalities with fewer economic opportunities. Second, we hypothesize that nepotism is more prevalent in regions with less democratic accountability. Third, we argue that because nepotism distorts institutional incentives, we should observe an association between nepotism and overstaffing of public institutions. Our analysis does not ultimately show a meaningful relationship between the supply of economic opportunities and penetration of relative networks in public institutions. Yet, our work does confirm that robust political competition increases accountability and reduces levels of state exploitation. We also establish a link between nepotism and a swollen public sector: the penetration of nepotism goes hand in hand with higher levels of employment in Lithuanian municipality administrations.

Gender Representation in Saudi EFL Textbooks: A Study of the Family and Friends Series

The aim of the present study was to investigate the gender representation in the English as a Foreign Language textbook, Family and Friends 6 KSA second edition, that is designed internationally and widely used in private Saudi elementary schools. To achieve the study goals, a mixed method was used, content analysis and a compiling quantitative data in which the corpus of the English textbook was analyzed; frequencies and percentages of gender appearances and activities were also calculated. The major findings of the study were as follows: First, women were underrepresented in terms of appearance. Second, males were dominant of the reading passages and dialogues topics. Third, there is an overall higher tendency for females to be referenced in sentences before males. forth, males were presented in a wider range and overall a higher level of employment and enjoyed a wider range of spare time and leisure activities than females. Fifth, however, the distribution of household responsibilities was equal between females and males and female activities were not restricted to passive indoor activities. Recommendations and suggestions for further studies are presented at the end of the results section of this paper.

How to empower women’s entrepreneurship? An analysis of women’s sport employment and contextual variables in European Union countries using a fuzzy approach

Although the number of women entrepreneurs has increased in recent years, it is still lower than that of men. In addition, although the sports sector has been characterized by its growth in recent years and contributes to the GDP of the countries by generating employment, the role that this has within female entrepreneurship has never been analysed. Therefore, the objective of this study is to know the combinations of conditions (female employment in sports, government support, financing for entrepreneurs, perception of entrepreneurial opportunities and capacities, glass ceiling index and masculine values in society) that generate high levels of female entrepreneurship in the countries of the European Union, as these values are closer to the male TEA (Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity). A total of 13 European countries were analysed using the fsQCA methodology. The results show that, for high levels of female TEA, the main combination is high levels of government support*high levels of glass ceiling index*low levels of masculinity*low levels of opportunities perception and high levels of female employment in sport, explaining 45% of the cases. The results present a series of implications for improving female entrepreneurship in the European Union countries.