Resilient Regions in Brazil: Unfolding the Effects of COVID-19 From a Socioeconomic Perspective

At the beginning of 2020, the world was left in an unprecedented state of shock by the COVID-19 pandemic. Brazil quickly became the epicenter of new cases of contamination, where the propagation of the virus was unrestrained, despite boasting one of the strongest Universal health coverage systems in Latin America. This paper has at least three empirical contributions to the literature about economic resilience and the COVID-19 pandemic. Firstly it is a critical issue regarding the "economics versus life" trade-off, which is an essential question for developing countries, given that policymakers must decide between policies to reduce the number of COVID-19 infections without damaging the economy. Secondly, our findings suggest that the early adoption of isolation measures applied in 2020, such as the financial aid and the vaccination have been effective in controlling the effects of the pandemic, especially in vulnerable microregions. Furthermore, it was verified that the Emergency financial aid was a fundamental policy in minimizing the economic impacts of the pandemic and allowing people to practice social distancing, contributing positively to the Employment Resilience Index and negatively related to the growth rate of deaths due to COVID-19. The contribution of our study is to measure an inverted U-shaped curve to demonstrate that policymakers must achieve a minimum of families to decrease the COVID-19 deaths. These contributions are essential and straightforward findings to lead policymakers' decisions in developing countries facing financial constraints in the public budget and population reticence about physical distancing, self-quarantine and vaccination.

Strategic Agility and Economic Environment’s Friendliness-Hostility in Explaining Performance of Polish SMEs in the Phase of COVID-19 Pandemic

The main purpose of this article is to present the relationship between two factors: perceived environmental hostility (or friendliness) and strategic agility with market performance of Polish SMEs from medium-tech and high-tech industries during COVID-19 pandemic. This research directly refers to analogical study analyzing the role of the two variables in the period just before COVID-19 (Sikora & Baranowska-Prokop, Advances in longitudinal data methods in applied economic research, Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, 2021). Research results revealed that respondents interviewed during the period of entire second lockdown in December 2020–January 2021 evaluated external environment as more friendly (none of the respondents evaluated environment as “unfriendly”) compared to their pre-COVID counterparts interviewed during May–July 2019. Moreover, in contrast to the previous research, neither strategic agility nor environmental hostility–friendliness showed significant relationships with firms’ results. These unexpected findings may be explained in regards to several factors: In general, industry was hit less severely by lockdowns than services (most of respondents declared only “moderately” negative impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on the environment their firm operated and the relationship between the declared number of COVID-19 related consequences and market performance was weak).Efficacy of government’s programs within the framework of “Anti-crisis Shield” (introduced in Poland end-March 2020) providing subsidies for enterprises (to maintain financial liquidity and employment).Favorable macro-environment in which the local currency (considered as undervalued) helped both exporters making them more price-competitive and manufacturing firms operating on the local market by “insulating” them from cheaper imports. In our opinion, friendly macro-environment, availability of public assistance programs, and firms’ capability to get money from them (which need further research) were decisive factors influencing Polish firms’ performance, whereas strategic agility, as operationalized in this study and in the previous one, did not matter as significant predictor of firms’ success. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

An Empirical Analysis of Income Elasticity of Out-of-Pocket Healthcare Expenditure in Mauritius.

A free universal healthcare provision exists in Mauritius. Yet the share of out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure out of total household expenditure has been growing over time. This study estimates income elasticity of out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure using Mauritian household data within an Engel curve framework. In the absence of longitudinal data on out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure patterns, the study proposes the application of the pseudo-panel approach using cross-sectional Household Budget Survey waves from 1996/97 to 2017. Income elasticity of out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure is estimated to be 0.938, which is just below unity. This implies that out-of-pocket healthcare demand is not considered to be a luxury, but a necessity in Mauritius. In order to see the differences in income elasticities by income groups, separate regressions are estimated for each income quartile over different years. The results indicate that income elasticities of out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure vary non-monotonically.

Changes in the economy as a system: Entrepreneurship under the influence of covid-19

This research paper summarises the results of the rapid changes in the structure of the economic system as a result of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The following tasks were set for the research: to describe the national economic system before COVID-19 pandemic in Latvia, to identify and assess the main features of changes in the national economic system during 2020 and to identify and assess the geographical location of structural changes in the country. The obtained results indicate three main tendencies in the structure of the economic system. Some economic segments indicate that the number of employees has increased in the time of the pandemic influence, some almost remained unchanged or experienced a decrease. As the linear changes in the volume of employees in the elements of the main structure of the economy take place to a different extent, then there is also an increase or decrease in the share of certain main segments in the regions of Latvia. © 2021, Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies. All rights reserved.