Public Health, Democracy, and Transition: Global Evidence and Post-Communism

Historical origins of corruption in the Romanian public health system - path dependency and contagion effect

BACKGROUND

In this paper, we estimate the long-lasting influence of the former Habsburg Empire's border on the territory of Romania, specifically on the prevalence of corrupt behaviour and practices in health services.

METHODS

Employing microdata from the 2016 Life in Transition Survey and applying ordered probit regression, we explore the hypothesis that the geographical proximity of respondents' residences to the former imperial border-restricting the analysis within a bandwidth of 50 km, 75 km or even 100 km on either side - significantly influences current individual tendencies towards corrupt behaviour.

RESULTS

The results indicate that individuals in Transylvania living in the immediate vicinity of the former border of the Habsburg Empire (no more than 75 km away) show a higher propensity towards corrupt behaviours, similar to those from Moldova and Wallachia who reside in the same bandwidth but to the east of the former historical border. Interestingly, on one hand, after a series of tests with various relevant factors, the contagion effect is observed from right to left, meaning from those in Moldova and Wallachia towards those in Transylvania, and not the other way around as might be expected based on other previous studies. On the other hand, individuals living more than 75 kms west of the former historical border show clear reluctance to engage in informal payments and gift-giving when interacting with the public health system as patients.

CONCLUSION

By rigorously controlling for various variables that comprehensively show different legacies of the communist regime, our results confirm the persistence of these influences across different bandwidths, thereby corroborating the hypothesis of path dependence influenced by the former Habsburg Empire.

Shushing the press shortens lives: cross-national evidence of the impact of press freedom on life expectancy

AIMS

Press freedom around the globe has deteriorated over the past decade, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper explores the effect of press freedom, as a cornerstone of democracy, on life expectancy.

METHODS

Exploring cross-country data, we use the ordinary least square method to estimate the association between press freedom and life expectancy. In addition, we adopt three novel instrumental variables to explore the causal relationship.

RESULTS

Our estimations indicate that a freer press leads to higher life expectancy, and the effect exists independently of the level of democracy. In addition, the effect of continuous exposure to press freedom is stronger than sporadic free press status. The results are robust to measurement errors, influential outliers, and country-specific heterogeneity.

CONCLUSIONS

This study reveals the fundamental role of press freedom in promoting public health that was previously underexplored. Therefore, enhancing freedom of expression can be an effective tool to address three of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, that is, reduce under-five mortality, improve maternal health, and combat HIV/AIDS.JEL:I1 H7 D02.

Role of household waste, governance quality, and greener energy for public health: Evidence from developed economies

In the current times, the global economies and international organizations declared that pollution is one of the prominent causes of declined human health. Still, most literature is biased toward economic sustainability and ignores such vital issues. The current study tends to identify the factors affecting public health in the Group of Seven economies except for Italy (G6). Specifically, this study aims to investigate the influence of household waste (HHW), bureaucratic quality (BQ), democratic accountability (DA), urbanization growth (URP), GDP per capita, and renewable energy use (EPR) on public health, throughout 1996-2020. This study uses advanced panel data approaches and finds the heterogeneity of slope coefficients, the dependence of cross-sections, and the persistence of cointegration between the variables. The asymmetric distribution of data leads to employing the novel method of moment quantile regression. The estimated results reveal that URP, GDPPC, and EPR significantly increase domestic general government health expenditures, improving public health. However, HHW and BQ adversely affect public health by reducing health expenditures. The robustness of the results is tested via utilizing the panel quantile regression. Based on the empirical findings, this study suggests policies regarding the improvement in public health expenditure, R&D investment, spending in renewable energy sector, and strengthening of the institutional quality.