Impact of economic crisis on fertility level in EU member states Abstract The aim of this diploma thesis is to provide a detailed development overview of the selected indicators, i.e., GDP per capita, unemployment rate and total fertility rate, in the context of the Global Economic Crisis, which, on a European scale, started in 2008, and evaluate the impact of the crisis on fertility levels across EU countries. The diploma thesis further concerns itself with various approaches to the relation between economic development and fertility, briefly with the causes of the Global Economic Crisis and with family policy measures in response to worsening economic conditions. Using cluster and regression analyses, the relationship between the economic indicators and total fertility rates in relation to the onset of the crisis has been examined. Even though total fertility rates of individual EU countries were affected differently by the change of economic conditions, the results indicate that changes in unemployment rates affect fertility levels. The decline in fertility levels during the crisis, which occurred in most of the examined countries, is certainly the result of a large number of factors affecting reproductive behaviour. Nevertheless, the results suggest that the symptoms of the crisis significantly...

A biodiversidade mundial encontra-se ameaçada e um dos meios mais difundidos para a proteção da mesma é a criação de Áreas Protegidas - AP, e inclusas a essas estão os Parques Nacionais. Além de da finalidade de proteção, os parques promevem a interação com a sociedade, são áreas carismáticas e com potencial econômico direto e indireto. Por permear diferentes esferas (social, econômico e ambiental) é que esse estudo analisou a evolução dos Parques Nacionais no Brasil, tanto no âmbito político, quanto histórico e econômico, com a finalidade de identificar lacunas no passado que dificultam o desenvolvimento dessas áreas através dessas inter-relações. O trabalho foi dividido em três capítulos. No primeiro capítulo abordaram-se os Parques Nacionais no Brasil em uma perspectiva evolutiva quanto à legislação ambiental e o momento histórico do país, desde a criação do primeiro Código Florestal até a promulgação do Sistema Nacional de Unidades de Conservação, ainda vigente. O segundo capítulo compilou dados de 1934 a 2012 no que tange ao orçamento voltado para os Ministérios responsáveis pelo meio ambiente em cada período e assim auferir se a evolução na criação dos parques também ocorreu com o aporte financeiro dos respectivos órgãos. Em conseguinte, o último capítulo reuniu elementos para analisar a seguinte questão: há uma relação entre desenvolvimento e meio ambiente? Uma análise exploratória foi realizada quanto à correlação entre os Parques Nacionais brasileiros e dois indicadores de desenvolvimento bastante utilizados, e também criticados por alguns, o IDH e o PIB per capita. Na primeira análise constatou-se que o número de parques aumentou conforme as alterações legislativas, sendo a promulgação da Constituição Federal de 1988 o período de mais acréscimos de parques decretados, bem como o bioma Mata Atlântica, primeiro a ter um Parque Nacional, ainda é detentor do maior número de parques, 21 do total de 67. Na segunda análise percebeu-se que os orçamentos destinados aos ministérios incumbidos da política dos parques ao longo dos períodos analisados (1934 a 2012) foram divergentes da criação dos Parques Nacionais. Na terceira análise, no que diz respeito à correlação entre o número de parques e o IDH há uma correlação significativa, correlação de Pearson = 0,62 e a correlação de Pearson entre a área total dos parques e o PIB per capita foi de 0,87. / The world\'s biodiversity is under threat and one of the most widespread means for the protection of that is the creation of Protected Areas - AP, and these are included in the National Parks. Besides the purpose of protection, parks promote interaction with society, are charismatic and areas with economic potential direct and indirect. By permeate different spheres (social, economic and environmental) is that this study examined the evolution of the National Parks in Brazil, both in the political, economic and historical as, in order to identify gaps in the past that hinder the development of these areas through these interrelations. The work was divided into three chapters. In the first chapter addressed to the National Parks in Brazil in an evolutionary perspective regarding environmental legislation and the historical moment of the country, since the creation of the first Forest Code until the promulgation of the National System of Conservation Units, still in force. The second chapter has compiled data from 1934 to 2012 regarding the budget-oriented ministries responsible for the environment in each period and thus obtain the evolution in the creation of the parks also occurred with the financial support of the respective bodies. In consequence, the final chapter sought to glimpse the following question: is there a relationship between development and the environment? An exploratory analysis was conducted on the correlation between the Brazilian National Parks and two widely used indicators of development, and also criticized by some, the HDI and GDP per capita. In the first analysis found that the number of parks increased with legislative changes, with the promulgation of the Constitution of 1988 over the period of accrued enacted parks and the Atlantic Forest biome, first to have a National Park, is still with the highest number of parks, 21 of 67. In the second analysis it was realized that the budgets for the ministries responsible for the policy of the parks over the periods analyzed (1934- 2012) diverged from the creation of the National Parks. In the third analysis, with regard to the correlation between the number of parks and the HDI is a significant correlation, Pearson correlation = 0.62 and Pearson correlation between the total area of parks and GDP per capita was 0.87.

Le paludisme et la pneumonie constituent encore des problèmes de santé publique dans les pays à faible revenu, dont Madagascar. Toutefois, si le paludisme a reçu plus d’attention et vu ses programmes de lutte renforcés depuis la création du Fonds mondial en 2002, la pneumonie quant à elle est souvent négligée. Cependant, depuis peu, l’Unicef, s’appuyant sur les résultats encourageants obtenus au niveau communautaire dans la lutte contre le paludisme, pousse à l’intégration du dépistage et de la prise en charge de la pneumonie au niveau communautaire. Pour appuyer ce plaidoyer, des études d’impact et de type coût-efficacité sont nécessaires pour vérifier que cette stratégie est bien efficace et efficiente. C’est l’objet du chapitre 4 de cette thèse qui étudie l’expérience pilote menée par l’Unicef dans le district d’Antalaha. Nous montrons que ce programme a eu un impact notable sur la prise en charge du paludisme et de la pneumonie. Toutefois, la qualité de cette prise en charge est encore remise en question. Cela indique que, avant de décider d’une mise à l’échelle, ce programme mérite d’être révisé pour l’améliorer. Outre la perte de bien-être, le paludisme et la pneumonie ont un coût financier d’abord, économique, ensuite. Un des arguments de plaidoyer est alors de montrer, s’il y en a, les effets économiques des deux maladies. C’est l’objet des chapitres 2 et 3 avec une application à Madagascar. Auparavant, le sous-bassement théorique du lien entre santé et revenu ou développement économique est présenté dans le premier chapitre. / Malaria and pneumonia remain a public health problem in low-income countries, including Madagascar. However, while malaria has received more attention and its control programs have been strengthened since the creation of the Global Fund in 2002, pneumonia is often neglected. Face on the encouraging results of malaria community case management, UNICEF wants to integrate pneumonia management at community level. To support this advocacy, the impact and the cost-effectiveness of this strategy must be known to verify that it is effective and efficient. This is the purpose of Chapter 4 of this thesis which studies the pilot experiment conducted by Unicef in the district of Antalaha. It is shown that this program has had a significant impact on the management of malaria and pneumonia. However, the quality of this care is questioned. This situation indicates that, before scaling up, this program should be revised to improve it. Besides the loss of well-being, malaria and pneumonia have a financial and economic cost. Therefore, the economic effects of the two diseases are shown in the chapters 2 and 3 concerning the case of Madagascar. Previously, the theoretical under-base of the link between health and economic development is presented in the first chapter.

A biodiversidade mundial encontra-se ameaçada e um dos meios mais difundidos para a proteção da mesma é a criação de Áreas Protegidas - AP, e inclusas a essas estão os Parques Nacionais. Além de da finalidade de proteção, os parques promevem a interação com a sociedade, são áreas carismáticas e com potencial econômico direto e indireto. Por permear diferentes esferas (social, econômico e ambiental) é que esse estudo analisou a evolução dos Parques Nacionais no Brasil, tanto no âmbito político, quanto histórico e econômico, com a finalidade de identificar lacunas no passado que dificultam o desenvolvimento dessas áreas através dessas inter-relações. O trabalho foi dividido em três capítulos. No primeiro capítulo abordaram-se os Parques Nacionais no Brasil em uma perspectiva evolutiva quanto à legislação ambiental e o momento histórico do país, desde a criação do primeiro Código Florestal até a promulgação do Sistema Nacional de Unidades de Conservação, ainda vigente. O segundo capítulo compilou dados de 1934 a 2012 no que tange ao orçamento voltado para os Ministérios responsáveis pelo meio ambiente em cada período e assim auferir se a evolução na criação dos parques também ocorreu com o aporte financeiro dos respectivos órgãos. Em conseguinte, o último capítulo reuniu elementos para analisar a seguinte questão: há uma relação entre desenvolvimento e meio ambiente? Uma análise exploratória foi realizada quanto à correlação entre os Parques Nacionais brasileiros e dois indicadores de desenvolvimento bastante utilizados, e também criticados por alguns, o IDH e o PIB per capita. Na primeira análise constatou-se que o número de parques aumentou conforme as alterações legislativas, sendo a promulgação da Constituição Federal de 1988 o período de mais acréscimos de parques decretados, bem como o bioma Mata Atlântica, primeiro a ter um Parque Nacional, ainda é detentor do maior número de parques, 21 do total de 67. Na segunda análise percebeu-se que os orçamentos destinados aos ministérios incumbidos da política dos parques ao longo dos períodos analisados (1934 a 2012) foram divergentes da criação dos Parques Nacionais. Na terceira análise, no que diz respeito à correlação entre o número de parques e o IDH há uma correlação significativa, correlação de Pearson = 0,62 e a correlação de Pearson entre a área total dos parques e o PIB per capita foi de 0,87. / The world\'s biodiversity is under threat and one of the most widespread means for the protection of that is the creation of Protected Areas - AP, and these are included in the National Parks. Besides the purpose of protection, parks promote interaction with society, are charismatic and areas with economic potential direct and indirect. By permeate different spheres (social, economic and environmental) is that this study examined the evolution of the National Parks in Brazil, both in the political, economic and historical as, in order to identify gaps in the past that hinder the development of these areas through these interrelations. The work was divided into three chapters. In the first chapter addressed to the National Parks in Brazil in an evolutionary perspective regarding environmental legislation and the historical moment of the country, since the creation of the first Forest Code until the promulgation of the National System of Conservation Units, still in force. The second chapter has compiled data from 1934 to 2012 regarding the budget-oriented ministries responsible for the environment in each period and thus obtain the evolution in the creation of the parks also occurred with the financial support of the respective bodies. In consequence, the final chapter sought to glimpse the following question: is there a relationship between development and the environment? An exploratory analysis was conducted on the correlation between the Brazilian National Parks and two widely used indicators of development, and also criticized by some, the HDI and GDP per capita. In the first analysis found that the number of parks increased with legislative changes, with the promulgation of the Constitution of 1988 over the period of accrued enacted parks and the Atlantic Forest biome, first to have a National Park, is still with the highest number of parks, 21 of 67. In the second analysis it was realized that the budgets for the ministries responsible for the policy of the parks over the periods analyzed (1934- 2012) diverged from the creation of the National Parks. In the third analysis, with regard to the correlation between the number of parks and the HDI is a significant correlation, Pearson correlation = 0.62 and Pearson correlation between the total area of parks and GDP per capita was 0.87.

Globally, injury is a major public health problem. The extent of the problem varies considerably by demographic subgroups, regions and national income. The overall objective of this thesis is to examine the relationship between injury mortality and economic development, and to discuss its role in the changing patterns of mortality as described in health transition theory. By cross-sectional analysis between cause-specific injury-related mortality and income per capita, studies included in this thesis indicated that while unintentional injury mortality (UIM) and homicide rates correlated negatively with GNP per capita for total populations with varying patterns for age-specific mortality, suicide rates increased slightly by nations’ income per capita, especially among women. In age- and cause-specific injury mortality differentials between low-income, middle-income and high-income countries, ageing and injury interplay mutually with regard to health transition; declining rates in child UIM by income level contributes to the ageing process, while increasing UIM among the elderly, in combination with ageing populations boosts the absolute number of injury deaths in this segment. Between the income-based country groups, both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses show that injury mortality for all three major causes (i.e. unintentional injury, suicide and homicide) first increase and then decrease with rising income per capita, following an inverted U-shaped curve. These results illustrate that injury is not a homogeneous public health phenomenon from a health transition perspective. While child unintentional mortality clearly agrees with ‘diseases of poverty’, unintentional injury in the elderly agrees with ‘diseases of affluence’. Patterns for homicide and suicide are more complex and uncertain. Generally, the strength and direction of injury mortality by economic development vary considerably by age, sex and type of injury. Further research on causations, mechanisms, broader indicators and data quality, as well as theoretical developments on health transition taking new findings and parallel frameworks into account, is needed to fully understand the complex relationship between economic development and injury mortality.

The Environmental Kuznets Curve is an inverted U-shaped relationship which demonstrates how environmental degradation increases as countries begin to develop and lowers as they become wealthier. The classical EKC measures the effects of GDP per capita (a country’s wealth) on pollu-tion. This paper is a study of the connection of a number of factors- GDP per capita, fossil fuels, al-ternative and nuclear energy, rural population and life expectancy at birth to the Environmental Kuznets Curve. Two econometric approaches are applied in order to test whether the variables have a more pronounced linear or quadratic form. Four income groups of countries are investigated in order to check if the state of development plays a crucial role in environmental deterioration. The results of the study point out that EKC does not apply for the chosen variables. From the regression for GDP, however, it can be concluded that EKC forms in 1990s.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to cover the catching up with the economic level among the countries of middle and eastern Europe. More accurately it analyses GDP per capita and household income per capita as one of the key economic indicators. The thesis concretely focuses on analysis of beta and sigma convergence and cluster analysis of the mentioned regions and concurrently at the background of the analysis explains some theoretical terms from areas of economics, econometrics and statistics. The analysis was concluded in IBM SPSS programme which belongs to the most complex, user friendly and professionally often used expert tools. The data for the analysis were used from Eurostat.

Is GDP per capita one of the main drivers affecting demand for passenger air travelling? Based on the time series analysis conducted for North American and Middle Eastern region, we have not rejected hypothesis about positive impact of GDP per capita on demand for air travelling. The thesis also analyzes whether the effects observed are weaker for more developed and more saturated markets. The second hypothesis was rejected, as we have found that the effect of the GDP per capita was on average 10% stronger for the North American region than for the Middle Eastern region. Moreover, we have found that for both regions oil prices are the important driver of the passenger air travel demand.

The aim of the thesis is to analyze the process of nominal and real convergence of the Czech Republic to the average of the European Union (EU-27). The text uses comparison with other european transition economies (Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia). The thesis consists of an analysis of the progress of real GDP per capita, comparative price level, labor productivity, employment, labor costs and other indicators. Other topics such as alternative indicators of economical convergence or the accession of the Czech republic into the euro-zone are discussed.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Economics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / This study investigated the relationship between economic complexity and the three mac-roeconomic variables in a comparative setting between selected Sub-Saharan African (SSA) and BRICS countries. Economic complexity as a development index reveals how sophisticated a country is as shown by its exports structure through the Product Com-plexity Index (PCI) and Economic Complexity Index (ECI). The three macroeconomic var-iables are gross domestic product per capita (GDP per capita), current account and fixed investment (gross fixed capita formation) for the period 1994 to 2018.The first three set study objectives were investigated on whether there exists a short and long-run relation-ship through a Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (PARDL). The the fourth objective was to test for causality through a standard Granger causality, and fifth, to forecast the macroeconomic variables for the foreseeable future utilising the Impulse Response Func-tion (IRF) and the variance decomposition techniques, these are complementary tech-niques. The last two objectives were to draw a comparative analysis upon the findings, and to relate on the product complexities and economic landscape in the selected SSA and BRICS. Reporting on the ECI-GDP per capita nexus, the PARDL estimates revealed a positive and significant association between ECI and GDP per capita in both the se-lected SSA and BRICS in the long-run. There was no Granger causal effect between ECI and GDP per capita for both set of countries. The concern was in relation to forecasting GDP per capita due to a shock in ECI. The selected SSA GDP per capita response to a shock in ECI was neutral when adopting the IRF technique, and the variance decompo-sition also revealed small estimates in both the short and long-run, below 1%. In the BRICS economies, there was a meaningful positive reaction from a shock in ECI when deploying the IRF technique, while the variance decomposition had a 3% response in the long run when seen through the variance decomposition. On the current account-ECI relationship, the PARDL estimates exposed that there was a positive and significant impact from ECI on the current account in both the groups in the long-run significant while short-run results were insignificant. Granger causality could not detect any causal effect between ECI and current account in the selected SSA, while in the BRICS countries there was a unidirectional causal effect from ECI to current account. When forecasting the current account, the selected SSA reacted negatively to a shock in v ECI seen through the IRF, and the variance decomposition also revealed a small reaction in any period. In the BRICS case, current account’s response was a positive and explo-sive reaction from a shock in ECI when applying the IRF technique. The VD revealed a higher change in current account was explained by a shock in ECI. On the ECI-Fixed Investment, the PARDL estimates showed that there was a long-run positive and signifi-cant effect between ECI and fixed investment in bothgroups. However, the Granger causal results revealed no presence of causality in the selected SSA, while there was causal unidirectional effect from ECI to fixed investment. The IRF technique revealed a negative fixed investment reaction from a shock in ECI, and the variance decomposition results revealed a small reaction in fixed investment in the selected SSA. In the BRICS case, there was a positive and explosive fixed investment emanating from a shock in ECI. Utilising the variance decomposition fixed investment in BRICS was explained by inno-vative shocks in ECI in the long run. On the last two objectives, comparatively the selected SSA countries are disadvantaged as they are concentrated in negative ECI as seen in the descriptive statistics, reflecting that they are still much less developed. This tells us that they are less industrialised as compared to the BRICS nations who are better off. These selected SSA economies are not developed enough as compared to the BRICS nations. The SSA region needs to learn from the leading BRICS countries by creating a conducive environment for a better de-velopment of innovation that improves the domestic value chain that produces knowledge-based products for the export market. The rest of the selected SSA region should form part of economic integrations with the more developed countries that offer mutual beneficiation like South Africa to fast track the developmental of their states. There is a need to modernise the agricultural and agro-industries. The region should harness the full potential of its agricultural sector. This will create a large global market share and perhaps increase the current account outlook through trade with more efficient agro-pro-cessed products. Africa needs to scale up investment in many fronts from government to private investment to improve infrastructure, more so that the scale of needs is so much in the continent.