European Journal of Economic Studies

206-210

Authors: Amelia Correa, Romar Correa

We detail the monetary context within which fiscal policy must operate. The monetary and the fiscal organs of the State must coordinate so as to “stabilize an unstable economy” (Minsky). The specific instruments that will emerge to fulfil the task are the rate of interest on government bills and the income tax rate.

225-240

Authors: Liliane Jodkowski

Change of society’s demographic structure (society’s ageing) causes a need to reform a statutory free health care system. New expensive medical technologies, growing costs of treatment as society is getting older and older together with stagnated tendencies in inflows from health fees make it essential to look for changes that should ease finances of the system. In this paper, some important reforms of German health care system (after 2000) in the context of looking for solutions for a Polish health care system. The Polish healthcare system is regularly criticised, and evaluated negatively in comparison with other EU countries. The problems are not only difficult access to medical services (long waiting lists, especially to specialists), corruption, providing services out of turn, low earnings in the sector and resulting outflow of highly qualified workforce to countries providing better working conditions and higher salaries, but also low quality of services (meaning high level of complications) and high patient co-payment (medication charges and so-called “expressions of gratitude”). This situation is not affected by changes in Polish demography, but, among others, the gaps in the healthcare system regulations and insufficient supervision over medical units, enabling and facilitating corruption and creation of monopsony (there is only one recipient - NFZ. This concept is especially relevant to the labour market, with only one employer in the region and many dependent employees or, for example, one state company purchasing goods or services from multiple suppliers) in the market of statutory medical services (NFZ). The German system is also criticized but for different reasons. In particular it is thought to be ineffective in fund management, which results from the system organization and is expressed in relatively low quality of services by relatively high costs. The aim of this paper is to compare the health care systems in Poland and Germany, to indicate their specific problems and steps taken to adapt these systems to challenges caused by the change in the structure of society and the development of modern technologies as well as the costs increase while maintaining, at the same time, fair access to free health services, reasonable expenditures and ethical principles.

247-251

Authors: Irina Yu. Potashova, Larisa V. Charhifalakjan

This article examines existing approaches to construing the essence of services and defining them and addresses the specifics in understanding the character of services. The authors conduct an analysis of the major characteristics of services covered in relevant literature, which leads them to conclude that the majority of researchers point up as the major property of services the process character of their provision. Based on their analysis, the authors fine-tune the essence and major characteristics of services, based on which they put forth a process definition of services.

263-267

Authors: Michail Yu. Puchkov, Ramazan M. Faiziev

Cluster policy is one of the most important methods to manage economic development of the country. It secures manufacture’s high profitability, increase of manufacture’s competitive ability and expansion of sales of goods. Authors describe basic aspects of cluster’s creation, its purposes and constituents, and also particular qualities and cluster’s organization conditions in agro industrial cluster’s development in Astrakhan region. Two subclusters of Astrakhan region’s agro industrial clusters were chosen as an object for consideration – cotton-growing and seed-growing subclusters.

279-284

Authors: Bushra Zulfiqar, Zeeshan Fareed, Umer Shehzad, Farrukh Shahzad, Sadaf Nabi

This paper intends to explore the impact of terrorism on FDI in Pakistan. Secondary data with a sample of 13 years from 2001 to 2013 is used. Augmented Dickey-Fuller is used to check the stationary/non stationary of data while ordinary least square method is employed to check the relationship between terrorism and FDI. The results reveals that there is negative and significant relationship exist between terrorism and FDI in Pakistan. The findings also show the behavior of international investors which are not willing to invest in Pakistan due to terrorist activities.