The main purpose of the article is to estimate the regional performance of healthcare systems within the EU at the NUTS 2 level. Using multiple regional inputs and outputs to characterize healthcare provision, non-parametric methodology is applied to evaluate the relative efficiency of 151 regions in old EU member states (EU-15) and 54 regions in new EU member states (EU-13) in the period 2007–2012. The empirical results show that efficiency differs significantly across the selected regions. In general, less developed regions show a relatively high level of efficiency whereas capital regions seem to be the least efficient regions since they mainly serve as national medical centres employing a disproportionally large amount of health resources. The empirical study also finds evidence of the potential to improve health outcomes by ensuring a sufficient level of healthcare resources in those regions that are lagging behind significantly.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4604078
The purpose of this study is to develop a more comprehensive framework that would provide better insight into the characteristics of organisational transformation (OT) of the public sector organisations in the e-government era. Despite the widespread opinion that successful implementation of information communication technology (ICT) is strongly correlated with the appropriate OT of the public sector, a critical analysis of the available literature within the field indicates that this important dimension of e-government development has been dealt with only partially. Accordingly, the paper attempts the following: to develop a more comprehensive framework for observing OT, to empirically explain the framework through analysis of three Slovenian e-government projects and to develop some general characteristics of ICT-induced OT in the public sector.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4526254
Access or right to information (RTI) is a fundamental principle in a democratic society. Most countries, particularly in the EU, regulate such institution by law, making a distinction between access to file within administrative procedures and access to public information. The article provides a normative and comparative study of the RTI regulation in Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia as South Eastern European countries. The dilemmas arising in the practical implementation thereof are analyzed as well. In the respective area, the degree of awareness of the need for open and good administration governance is rather high, taking into account EU guidelines, yet regulation alone does not suffice and should be followed by effective implementation to overcome still undergoing processes of Europeanization and (post)transition and develop good administrative governance.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4562606
Scientific network analysis takes at input large amounts of bibliographical data that are often incomplete. This leads to the introduction of different measurement errors in the scientific networks, which, in turn, influence the results of scientific networks analyses. Different authors have been studying the effects of measurement error on the results of network analysis, but these studies mostly rely on data gathered by survey questionnaires or on the study of incomplete data that are shown as random processes and emerge in unweighted undirected networks. This article aims at overcoming the limitations of these studies in three directions. First, we introduce measurement errors to network data following three most frequently present and well-known problems often present in bibliographic data: multiple authorship, homographs, and synonyms. Second, we apply missing data mechanisms to the identified incomplete data sources in order to link the latter with the probability of their occurrence. Third, we apply the incomplete data sources to different types of scientific networks and study the effects of measurement error in both, the weighted directed (i.e., citation) network and the weighted undirected (i.e., co-authorship) network. The results show that the most destructive incomplete data source is the problem of synonyms; it influences the accuracy and the robustness of the network structural measures the most. On the other hand, the multiple-authorship problem does not influence the results of network analysis at all.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4584110
The paper empirically explores the factor of public debt which considerably changes the mechanism that transmits fiscal policy effects to economic activity in the short term. We empirically examine and determine the turning point of debt - to - GDP ratio and evaluate the impact of levels of indebtedness in public sector on current economic growth for a panel dataset of 36 countries (31 OECD member states and 5 non - OECD EU member countries). The evaluation will give us an important understanding on the current indebtedness situation by determining the threshold values for our sample of countries, which indicates a possible non - linear and concave connection between indebtedness levels in the public sector and economic growth in the short term. Our sample is divided into subgroups distinguishing between so - called developed economies, covering the period 1980 - 2010, and emerging economies , covering the period 1995 - 2010. To evaluate a possible negative correlation and concave functional form between public debt and potential economic growth, we employ a panel estimation on a generalized economic growth model augmented with a debt variable, while also considering some methodological issues like the problems of heterogeneity and endogeneity. The results confirm the general theoretical assumption that at low levels of public debt the impact on growth is positive, whereas beyond a certain debt turning point a negative effect on growth prevails. Further, we calculated that the debt - to - GDP turning point, where the positive effect of accumulated public debt inverts into a negative effect, is roughly between 90 % and 94 % for developed economies. Yet, for emerging countries, the debt - to - GDP turning point is lower, namely between 44 % and 45 %. Therefore, we can confirm our hypothesis that the threshold value for the emerging economies is lower than for the developed ones in our sample.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4534190