Wolfgang Ortmanns

Knowledge-based economy causes changes in the higher education system: university graduates must have the ability to constantly learn and improve their skills, generate and disseminate new knowledge, form and multiply the knowledge capital of business. This paper aims to investigate a pairwise interconnection between higher education indicators and sets of parameters characterizing knowledge creation, impact, and diffusion. The following higher education indicators are used: expenditure on education, tertiary enrollment, graduates in science and engineering, tertiary inbound mobility, researcher, gross expenditure on R&D, top 3 global corporate R&D investors, top 3QS university ranking. Knowledge creation indicators are patents by origin, PCT patents by origin, utility models by origin, scientific and technical articles, citable documents, H-index. Knowledge impact is characterized through labor productivity growth, new businesses, software spending, ISO 9001 quality certificates, high-tech manufacturing. Knowledge diffusion parameters include intellectual property receipts, production and export complexity, high-tech exports, ICT services exports. The information base of the study is the data of the Global Innovation Index Report from the World Intellectual Property Organization for 40 European countries (selected depending on the availability of statistics) for 2022, research method – Canonical Correlation Analysis. The strongest positive correlation was found between higher education indicators and knowledge creation parameters. The second position takes connection between higher education indicators and knowledge diffusion parameters, the third – between higher education indicators and knowledge impact indicators. Among the higher education indicators, the most significant were gross expenditure on R&D, top 3 global corporate R&D investors, top 3 QS university ranking.

The study aims to determine the influence of the R&D expenditure structure funded by different sectors of stakeholders on the level of innovation development. The data sample involves values of GII and R&D expenditure funded by business, government, higher education, private non-profit sectors, and foreign sources for 10 countries – Ukraine and 9 top countries in GII-2022 for 2011–2020. Pearson/Spearman correlation analysis considers time lags to determine the nature and strength of relationships. For GII’s top countries, the relationship with innovation development level is confirmed as direct for funding R&D by business (in 8 from 9 countries), higher education (5 from 7), and foreign sources (5 from 9) with power from moderate to very high and 0-3-year lag. In Ukraine, the direct relationship is for financing by business (very high power and 3-year lag) and foreign sources (high power and 1-year lag). The regression modeling of dependences (Arellano-Bover/Blundell-Bond dynamic model for panel data and linear model for Ukraine) was also applied using STATA 18. In GII’s top countries, increasing the share of R&D expenditures financed by business by 1% contributes to increasing GII’s score by 0.25%, higher education – 2.47%; government, non-profit sector, and foreign sources – decreasing by 0.89%, 1.68% and 0.81% accordingly. In Ukraine, increasing financing R&D by the government by 1% leads to a similar decrease of GII estimate by 0.19% with a 2-year lag, and the business sector – an increase of 0.16% with a 3-year time lag. Vice versa, in Ukraine, R&D expenditures financed by higher education lead to GII’s score decreasing.

One of the effective ways to increase the level of population coverage with medical services is health insurance. The paper aims to determine what type of health insurance (compulsory, social, or voluntary) has the greatest impact on a country’s ability to provide large-scale and timely medical services to citizens, as measured by the number of unmet needs for medical examination, treatable and preventable mortality. The control variables included a country’s population size, the level of economic well-being, and the scale of the public health system (number of doctors and hospital beds) based on EUROSTAT data for all 27 EU countries in 2012–2021. Modelling (regression models of panel data with fixed and random effects in STATA 18, Wald test, Hausman test, Breusch and Pagan test) proved that only one of three researched types of insurance – voluntary health insurance – positively influences a country’s ability to provide large-scale and timely medical services to citizens: an increase in its volume by 1% leads to a decrease in unmet needs in medical examination on average across all EU countries by 0.26%, treatable mortality rate by 0.08%, preventive mortality rate by 0.27%. The influence of the other two types – compulsory and social – was not confirmed (received regression coefficients for these variables are not statistically significant). This emphasizes the importance of citizens’ conscious attitude to their health (due to the increase in voluntary health insurance) both in strengthening public health and in ensuring faster and better access to medical services.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the peculiarities of banks’ business models and assess their risks, which is especially relevant in the context of the war in Ukraine since 2014. The information base is the published statements for each month of 63 Ukrainian banks for the period from 1 January 2018 to 1 January 2024. The number of indicators is chosen in an empirical manner. Business models are investigated using the method of structural-functional groups of banks, which allows estimating large arrays of financial indicators, grouping banks with similar characteristics and drawing conclusions about the main risks. It is convenient to use neural networks, namely Kohonen’s self-organizing maps, to estimate large data sets. The largest group of banks places a significant part of assets in government securities and has an unstable resource base. The share of these banks in the system as of January 1, 2024 is 38% and total assets are 10%. The second group by number of banks is focused on corporate lending with a high share of current resources in liabilities, and includes 21% of banks, whose assets account for 31% of total assets. State-owned banks, PrivatBank and OschadBank, account for 35% of total assets. The business models of these banks are characterized by dependence on retail funds, a high share of investment operations, and high credit and currency risks. Ukraine’s banking system has significantly developed a risk-oriented approach to management, which allowed it to maintain stability in the face of a full-scale war.