Serhii Drozd

This study aims to examine whether the labor productivity of the US population directly depends on public or private insurance coverage of people, employment level, life expectancies, spending on the public health system as a percentage of GDP, and spending on the public health system in natural terms.
Empirical testing was carried out on the USА statistical data for 1987–2021 using a regression model with the fitting procedure backward stepwise selection (in Statgraphics software), and a multivariate adaptive regression spline MARS (using Salford Predictive Modeler software). The research hypothesis was confirmed for only two indicators: life expectancies and spending on the public health system in natural terms. Their impact on labor productivity appeared to be directly proportional. As an indicator, spending on the public health system has a greater impact on the change in productivity (0.0058%), whereas life expectancy has a lesser effect (0.0047%). The study showed that the MARS model provides more objective and accurate results compared to the regression model with the fitting procedure – backward stepwise selection. This conclusion is based on a comparison of real data modeled by both methods. The study proved that labor productivity in the USA grew yearly from 1987 to 2021 (the constant term in the MARS model’s regression equation is +0.48428). To calculate the specific values of labor productivity for each year, a model was developed depending on the optimal basic functions (automatically generated by the MARS model depending on the current values of life expectancies and spending on the public health system in natural terms).

Acknowledgment
This study is funded by Department of Applied Social Sciences of the Faculty of Organization and Management of the Silesian University of Technology for the year 2023 (grant number 13/020/BK_23/0081).

Considering Ukraine’s corruption scandals at all levels of public governance, combating corruption and enhancing transparency have become a pivotal factor in maintaining the trust of Ukrainian citizens and foreign partners in central and local authorities. It is also an essential prerequisite for Ukraine’s prospective membership in the EU and the allocation of financial assistance from external donors. The study aims to examine how transparency in local governance influences the level of corruption in regional cities of Ukraine. The paper examines how transparency in local authorities relates to different types of corruption, including bribery within municipal services, healthcare, and other public sectors. Utilizing panel data from 24 Ukrainian cities collected between 2017 and 2020 (all-Ukrainian sociological municipal survey and project ‘Transparent, Financially Sound and Competitive Local Governments in Ukraine’), the study employs both random and fixed-effects panel regression analyses to assess the impact of various governance indicators on corruption levels across different sectors, including municipal services, healthcare, and education. The findings suggest that higher transparency of the local authorities is generally associated with lower levels of bribery in the housing and communal services sector (estimation coefficient = –0.204226), in registration and licensing institutions (–0.5353756), in healthcare institutions (–0.2032171), and experience of bribing local authorities (–0.2505674). The analysis concludes that enhancing transparency may significantly reduce corrupt practices within local government operations, thereby strengthening public trust and bringing Ukraine closer to meeting European Union standards.

Acknowledgment
Serhiy Lyeonov, Serhii Drozd, and Yaroslаv Reshetniak thank the project 0123U101945 “National security of Ukraine through prevention of financial fraud and money laundering: war and post-war challenges” for carrying out their part of this research.
This study was funded by the European Union grant “NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia” (No. 09I03-03-V01-00130) and project VEGA – 1/0392/23 “Changes in the approach to the creation of companies’ distribution management concepts influenced by the effects of social and economic crises caused by the global pandemic and increased security risks.”