Can welfare states buffer technostress? Income and technostress in the context of various OECD countries.

Many workers are experiencing the downsides of being exposed to an overload of information and communication technology (ICT), highlighting the need for resources to cope with the resulting technostress. This article offers a novel cross-level perspective on technostress by examining how the context of the welfare state influences the relationship between income and technostress. Showing that individuals with higher income experience less technostress, this study argues that the welfare state represents an additional coping resource, in particular in the form of unemployment benefits. Since unemployment benefits insure income earners in the case of job loss, the negative effect of income on technostress should increase with higher levels of unemployment generosity. In line with these expectations, empirical results based on original survey data collected in collaboration with the OECD show that the impact of income on technostress varies across welfare state contexts. Implications for public health and policymakers are being discussed.

Dynamic linkages among CO2 emissions, human development, financial development, and globalization: empirical evidence based on PMG long-run panel estimation.

This study investigates the impact of the human capital index, globalization, and financial development on carbon dioxide of grouping OECD countries using pool mean group estimation technique from 1990 to 2015. This study also applies the second-generation cross-sectional augmented Dickey-Fuller and cross-sectional Im, Pesaran, Shin panel (CIPS) unit root, and the latest (Westerlund 2008) cointegration tests for further investigations. The result shows that both the human development index and financial development stimulate environmental improvement by using PMG long-run panel estimation approach. Furthermore, the pairwise Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality results prove the two-way causal association between financial development and carbon emissions. The unidirectional causality running from globalization and human development index towards carbon emission is also supported. Based on the aforementioned results, we provide a set of recommendations for policy implication. Graphical abstract.

On the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emission: a panel unit root test with sharp and smooth breaks.

This study aims to examine the stochastic convergence of per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 21 OECD countries and 19 emerging market economies. After approximating both sharp and smooth breaks, the panel unit root tests are performed to test the convergence. The empirical results suggest stochastic convergence for the two groups of countries. However, the results are different when tests for individual countries are conducted separately. Specifically, CO2 emissions of only four OECD countries and four emerging market economies show evidence of convergence if smooth breaks are not considered. With the inclusion of both sharp and smooth breaks, convergence is observed for 11 OECD countries and 10 emerging market economies. These findings may have implications for climate change policy making in selected economies.

The impact of globalization and financial development on environmental quality: evidence from selected countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

This study investigates the impacts of globalization and financial development on environmental quality by incorporating energy consumption in the framework of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis for selected countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) over the 1990-2014 time spans. The cross-sectional dependence is determined by using the cross-sectional dependence and Lagrange Multiplier (LM) methods. This study employs second-generation panel unit root tests to check the unit root properties and the Westerlund panel cointegration test to examine the long-run equilibrium relationship among the variables. The results confirm the presence of cointegration in the long run. The Continuously Updated Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (CUP-FM) and Continuously Updated Bias-Corrected (CUP-BC) approaches are applied to investigate long-term output elasticities of the variables. The results show the stimulating role of energy consumption on Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This study finds support for the EKC hypothesis as it relates to selected OECD countries. Globalization and financial development increase environmental quality by reducing CO2 emissions. The causal relationship reveals the presence of a bidirectional relationship between energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The feedback causal effect runs between economic growth and CO2 emissions and between globalization and economic growth, while unidirectional causality runs from CO2 emissions to financial development, from economic growth to energy consumption, from energy consumption to financial development, from globalization to energy consumption, and from globalization to financial development. Policies that support green technology transfer among OECD countries, foreign direct investment in the renewable energy sector, financial development to support green infrastructure, and energy generation using renewable energy sources are recommended.

Revisiting the Income Inequality Hypothesis With 292 OECD Regional Units.

The income inequality hypothesis on the relationship between income inequality and population health has been debated for decades Disagreement exists on the hypothesis because empirical findings have reached inconsistent conclusions. At the cross-national level, the limited number of industrialized nations has created a chronic small-N problem for statistical analyses of the hypothesis. The OECD regional database containing statistics of hundreds of regional units can provide a breakthrough and is used for the first time for multiple regression in this article. It is found that income inequality is a statistically significant determinant of all the health indicators analysed. The findings support the income inequality hypothesis. In addition, the impact of income inequality seems to be stronger on infant mortality than on old-age mortality. GDP per capita also statistically significantly influences both life expectancy and old-age mortality but not infant mortality.

How and why do countries differ in their governance and financing-related administrative expenditure in health care? An analysis of OECD countries by health care system typology.

INTRODUCTION: Administration is vital for health care. Its importance may increase as health care systems become more complex, but academic attention has remained minimal. We investigated trends in administrative expenditure across OECD countries, cross-country spending differences, spending differences between health care system typologies, and differences in the scale and scope of administrative functions across typologies. METHODS: We used OECD data, which include health system governance and financing-related administrative activities by regulators, governance bodies, and insurers (macrolevel), but exclude administrative expenditure by health care providers (mesolevel and microlevel). RESULTS: We find that governance and financing-related administrative spending at the macrolevel has remained stable over the last decade at slightly over 3% of total health spending. Cross-country differences range from 1.3% of health spending in Iceland to 8.3% in the United States. Voluntary private health insurance bears much higher administrative costs than compulsory schemes in all countries. Among compulsory schemes, multiple payers exhibit significantly higher administrative spending than single payers. Among single-payer schemes, those where entitlements are based on residency have significantly lower administrative spending than those with single social health insurance, albeit with a small difference. DISCUSSION: These differences can partially be explained because multi-payer and voluntary private health insurance schemes require additional administrative functions and enjoy less economies of scale. Studies in hospitals and primary care indicate similar differences in administrative costs across health system typologies at the mesolevel and microlevel of health care delivery, which warrants more research on total administrative costs at all the levels of health systems.

Does trade matter for carbon emissions in OECD countries? Evidence from a new trade openness measure.

This paper analyzes the impacts of the per capita income, the per capita energy consumption, and the trade openness on the level of per capita carbon emissions in the panel dataset of 35 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries over the period 1960-2013. Along with the nominal trade openness, the paper uses a different trade openness measure, so called as the "trade potential index" (TPI). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that uses the TPI in the empirical environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis literature. The paper finds that the EKC hypothesis is valid and there is an "inverted-U" relationship between the income and the carbon emissions. In addition, the paper observes that there is a positive effect of the energy consumption on the carbon emissions. Furthermore, the results indicate that both trade openness measures are negatively associated with the carbon emissions in the OECD countries in the long run.

Examining the effects of value-based physician payment models

Healthcare provider remuneration mechanisms are one of the key policy levers that decision-makers can harness to influence health-system performance.(1) In Canada, remunerating physicians is the second-largest source of public expenditures accounting for 21% of all health spending in the country.(2) Within the health systems for countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), many physicians continue to be paid through traditional payment mechanisms, including fee-for-service (i.e., where physicians receive a fixed fee for each healthcare service performed), capitation (i.e., where physicians receive a fixed fee for each patient in the roster) and fee-for-time (i.e., where physicians receive a salary/fixed income on a regular basis).(1; 3-5) In Canada, fee-for-service payments accounted for 72% of total clinical payments in 2015, with the remainder consisting of alternative payment plans (i.e., models other than traditional feefor-service)

Achieving value for money in health: a comparative analysis of OECD countries and regional countries.

OBJECTIVE: To measure efficiency gains in health sector over the years 1995 to 2013 in OECD, EU, non-member European countries. METHODS: An output-oriented DEA model with variable return to scale, and residuals estimated by regression equations were used to estimate efficiencies of health systems. Slacks for health care outputs and inputs were calculated by using DEA multistage method of estimating country efficiency scores. RESULTS: Better health outcomes of countries were related with higher efficiency. Japan, France, or Sweden were found to be peer-efficient countries when compared to other developed countries like Germany and United States. Increasing life expectancy beyond a certain high level becomes very difficult to achieve. Despite declining marginal productivity of inputs on health outcomes, some developed countries and developing countries were found to have lowered their inefficiencies in the use of health inputs. Although there was no systematic relationship between political system of countries and health system efficiency, the objectives of countries on social and health policy and the way of achieving these objectives might be a factor increasing the efficiency of health systems. CONCLUSIONS: Economic and political stability might be as important as health expenditure in improving health system goals. A better understanding of the value created by health expenditures, especially in developed countries, will require analysis of specific health interventions that can increase value for money in health. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Changes in Income at Macro Level Predict Sex Ratio at Birth in OECD Countries.

The human sex ratio at birth (SRB) is approximately 107 boys for every 100 girls. SRB was rising until the World War II and has been declining slightly after the 1950s in several industrial countries. Recent studies have shown that SRB varies according to exposure to disasters and socioeconomic conditions. However, it remains unknown whether changes in SRB can be explained by observable macro-level socioeconomic variables across multiple years and countries. Here we show that changes in disposable income at the macro level positively predict SRB in OECD countries. A one standard deviation increase in the change of disposable income is associated with an increase of 1.03 male births per 1000 female births. The relationship is possibly nonlinear and driven by extreme changes. The association varies from country to country being particular strong in Estonia. This is the first evidence to show that economic and social conditions are connected to SRB across countries at the macro level. This calls for further research on the effects of societal conditions on general characteristics at birth.

Robust analysis of the determinants of healthcare expenditure growth: evidence from panel data for low-, middle- and high-income countries.

This paper examines the determinants of healthcare expenditure for low-, middle- and high-income countries, and it quantifies their influences in order to assess policies for achieving universal health coverage. We elaborate two models, a fixed-effect model and the dynamic panel model, to estimate the factors associated with the total health expenditure growth as well as its major components for 167 countries over the period of 1993-2013. The panel data on total health expenditure per capita and its components were taken from the World Development Indicators. Overall, our results showed that total health expenditure per capita is rising in all countries over time as a result of rising incomes. However, our estimates showed that the income elasticity of health expenditure ranged from 0.75 to 0.96 in the fixed-effect static panel model, while in the dynamic panel model, it was smaller and ranged from 0.16 to 0.47. Our empirical findings indicate that development assistance for health reduced government domestic spending on health but increased total government health spending. Our results also indicate that the trend in health expenditure growth is significantly depending with the country's economic development. In addition, out-of-pocket expenditure is powerfully influenced by a country's capacity to increase general government revenues and social insurance contributions. Knowledge of factors associated to health expenditure might help policy makers to make wise judgments, plan health reforms and allocate resources efficiently. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Heterogeneity in the Effect of Common Shocks on Healthcare Expenditure Growth.

Healthcare expenditure growth is affected by important unobserved common shocks such as technological innovation, changes in sociological factors, shifts in preferences, and the epidemiology of diseases. While common factors impact in principle all countries, their effect is likely to differ across countries. To allow for unobserved heterogeneity in the effects of common shocks, we estimate a panel data model of healthcare expenditure growth in 34 OECD countries over the years 1980 to 2012, where the usual fixed or random effects are replaced by a multifactor error structure. We address model uncertainty with Bayesian model averaging, to identify a small set of robust expenditure drivers from 43 potential candidates. We establish 16 significant drivers of healthcare expenditure growth, including growth in GDP per capita and in insurance premiums, changes in financing arrangements and some institutional characteristics, expenditures on pharmaceuticals, population ageing, costs of health administration, and inpatient care. Our approach allows us to provide robust evidence to policy makers on the drivers that were most strongly associated with the growth in healthcare expenditures over the past 32 years. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Financing long-term care: ex ante, ex post or both?

This paper attempts to examine the heterogeneity in the public financing of long-term care (LTC) and the wide-ranging instruments in place to finance LTC services. We distinguish and classify the institutional responses to the need for LTC financing as ex ante (occurring prior to when the need arises, such as insurance) and ex post (occurring after the need arises, such as public sector and family financing). Then, we examine country-specific data to ascertain whether the two types of financing are complements or substitutes. Finally, we examine exploratory cross-national data on public expenditure determinants, specifically economic, demographic and social determinants. We show that although both ex ante and ex post mechanisms exist in all countries with advanced industrial economies and despite the fact that instruments are different across countries, ex ante and ex post instruments are largely substitutes for each other. Expenditure estimates to date indicate that the public financing of LTC is highly sensitive to a country's income, ageing of the population and the availability of informal caregiving.

[The impact of the economic crisis on health systems of OECD countries]. / L'impact de la crise économique sur les systèmes de santé des pays de l'OCDE.

This paper describes measures adopted by OECD countries in the health sector in response to the economic crisis which began in 2008: increase and diversification of revenues collected for health, increases in user charges, reductions in staff, salaries and prices of health goods and services; and policies aiming to increase health systems efficiency. It then reviews the impact of these policies on health spending trends.

The influence of (public) health expenditure on longevity.

OBJECTIVES: We report new evidence on the contribution of health expenditure to increasing life expectancy in OECD countries, differentiating the effects of public and private health expenditures. METHODS: A theoretical model is presented and estimated though a cross-country fixed effects multiple regression analysis for a sample of OECD countries over the period 1980-2000. RESULTS: Although the effect of aggregate health expenditure is not conclusive, public health expenditure plays a significant role in enhancing longevity. However, its influence diminishes as the size of the public health sector on GDP expands, reaching a maximum around the 8 %. CONCLUSIONS: With the influence of public health expenditure being positive, the ambiguous effect of the aggregate expenditure suggests that the weight of public and private health sectors matters, the second having a lower impact on longevity. This might explain the poor evolution of the life expectancy in countries with a high amount of private resources devoted to health. In such cases, an extension of public services could give rise to a better outcome from the overall health investment.

Alcohol affordability and alcohol demand: cross-country trends and panel data estimates, 1975 to 2008.

BACKGROUND: Relatively little is known about cross-country differences in alcohol affordability or factors that determine differences in affordability over time. This information is potentially important for alcohol policy, especially policies that focus on higher taxes or prices to reduce total alcohol consumption. This study estimates cross-country alcohol consumption relationships using economic models incorporating income and prices and alternative models based on alcohol affordability. The data and analysis are restricted to higher income countries. METHODS: Data for alcohol consumption per capita (ages 15+) are analyzed for 2 samples: first, 17 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for the period 1975 to 2000; second, 22 countries in the European Union for the period from 2000 to 2008. Panel data models are utilized, with country and time fixed-effects to control for confounding influences. In economic demand models, covariates are real per capita income and real alcohol price indices. In affordability models, income is divided by prices to yield an index of alcohol affordability. RESULTS: Analysis of data trends reveals that much of the increase in affordability is due to rising real incomes, and not falling real prices. Economic models of demand perform slightly better statistically, but differences are not substantial as income and affordability are highly correlated. For both samples, exogenous rates of growth of alcohol consumption are negative. Price and income elasticities, on average, are within the range of prior estimates. Affordability elasticities are between 0.21 and 0.25. CONCLUSIONS: Although alcohol affordability is a valid concept statistically, its use in policy discussions tends to hide underlying causes of changes in affordability. A better approach is a comparison and analysis of trends and cross-country differences in real incomes and real alcohol prices together with the affordability index. Country-level analysis of income and price elasticities also is required.

Association between economic fluctuations and road mortality in OECD countries.

Using longitudinal data from 32 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (1970-2010), this article investigates association between annual variations in road mortality and the economic fluctuations. Two regression models (fixed-effects and random-coefficients) were adopted for estimation. The cross-country data analyses suggested that road mortality is pro-cyclical and that the cyclicality is symmetric. Based on data from 32 OECD countries, an increase of on average 1% in economic growth is associated with a 1.1% increase in road mortality, and vice versa.