Background: This study aims at analyzing the efficiency of the health systems of 31 European countries in treating COVID-19, for the period January 1, 2020 – January 1, 2021, by incorporating some factors from a multidimensional perspective. Methods: The methodology used in the research was Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), through which efficiency scores for health systems have been calculated. The research was performed considering three stages: the first wave (January 1–June 15), the relaxation period (June 15–October 1) and the second wave (October 1–December 31). In evaluating the determinants of the efficiency of health systems, six major fields of influence were taken into account: health care, health status, population, economic, cultural/societal and governmental issues, all covering 15 indicators. After measuring the efficiency, we used the Tobit type regression to establish the influencing elements on it. Results: The results for the public health systems of European states were determined for each country and period. We evaluated the efficiency of health systems in Europe against COVID-19, starting from health inputs (COVID-19 cases, physicians, nurses, hospital beds, health expenditure) and output (COVID-19 deaths). The obtained outputs show that, especially in the first phase of the pandemic, the inefficiency of the health systems was quite high, mainly in Western countries (Italy, Belgium, Spain, UK). In the relaxation phase and in the second wave, the Western states, severely affected at the beginning of the pandemic, began to take adequate measures and improve the efficiency of their sanitary systems. Instead, Eastern European countries were hit hard by the inefficiency of health systems (Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Romania). After Tobit regression, results of the study show that the influencing elements are different for the three stages: concerning the first wave, comobirdities, population age, and population density are important; for relaxation period a great influence have government effectiveness and power distance; with respect to second wave, the relevant factors are education and population density. Conclusions: The results obtained could serve as starting points for health policymakers to perform comparative analyzes in terms of good practices in the health system and to develop national plans to better deal with health crises. At the same time, they can be used internationally to achieve a coherent and effective community response to the pandemic.

This study tests the importance of various categories of public expenditure, the functional structure, and growth in the gross domestic product (GDP), using an autoregressive-distributed lag (ARDL) model. We document and study the correlation between real GDP growth and 10 different categories of public expenditure, according to their functional classification, using quarterly data for the period 1995–2015, for 10 selected Central and Eastern European countries that joined the European Union. The results of our study, like most recent literature, show that expenditures on education and health care have a positive impact on the economy, while expenditures on defense, economic affairs, general public services, and social welfare have a negative impact.

The economic crisis of 2008 strongly affected European countries, many of them slipping into a recession whose depth and manifestation differed substantially from country to country and from region to region. In this context, economists revived the concept of economic resilience of states and regions and focused on identifying and explaining its determinants. The literature investigates ways to enhance economic resilience through appropriate public policies, but the studies conducted so far have several limitations. In order to contribute to this goal, this article analyzes the economic resilience of the regions of seven Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) and its main determinant factors. The results show that, in terms of resistance, Bulgaria, Slovenia and their regions behaved best, while Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia (including regions) had a negative evolution. In terms of recovery Bulgaria (and 4 regions out of 6), Romania (5 out of 8 regions) and Slovakia (4 of 4 regions) performed better than the other Eastern countries. The determining factors of resilience for the studied regions concern the size of the manufacturing sector, the services and public administration, entrepreneurship and the human capital represented by tertiary education; agriculture and urban population have no significant influence on regional resilience. We adopt an econometric approach in this study, using the quantile regression for the analysis. Based on these empirical evidences, appropriate proposals have been formulated, useful to both field theorists and practitioners in public policy.

Achieving the goals of sustainable development and poverty reduction implies an important condition for access to electricity for the entire population. In the economic literature, the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth has different perspectives. The lack of good governance within an economy, besides the deficiencies of energy resources, is a key issue in worsening energy issues for developing countries. These countries have failed to alleviate the energy crises that have hindered development prospects, amid flourishing corruption and inefficient governments. Our research, using a panel methodology, analyzes the long-term relationship between energy consumption, economic growth and good governance for 14 Central and Eastern European countries, over the period 1995–2017. The study demonstrates empirically that there is a causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth, underlining the fact that deficiencies in the energy system lead to slowing economic growth. The study also shows that good governance influences electricity and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) consumption, and the governments from Central and Eastern European countries have to restore good governance in the economy, creating an environment conducive to investment in the energy sector, which would increase competition and reduce inefficiencies in the production, transmission, and distribution of energy.

After the recent hard attempts felt on a global scale, notably in the health sector, the steady efforts of scientists have been materialized in maybe one of the most expected findings of the last decades, i.e. the launching of the COVID-19 vaccines. Although it is not our goal to plead for vaccination, as the decision in this regard is a matter of individual choice, we believe it is necessary and enlightening to analyze how one's educational status interferes with COVID-19 vaccination. There are discrepancies between world states vis-à-vis their well-being and their feedback to crises, and from the collection of features that can segregate the states in handling vaccination, in this paper, the spotlight is on education. We are referring to this topic because, generally, researches converge rather on the linkage between economic issues and COVID-19 vaccination, while education levels are less tackled in relation to this. To notice the weight of each type of education (primary, secondary, tertiary) in this process, we employ an assortment of statistical methods, for three clusters: 45 low-income countries (LICs), 72 middle-income countries (MICs) and 53 high-income countries (HICs). The estimates suggest that education counts in the COVID-19 vaccination, the tertiary one having the greatest meaning in accepting it. It is also illustrated that the imprint of education on vaccination fluctuates across the country groups scrutinized, with HICs recording the upper rates. The heterogeneity of COVID-19 vaccination-related behaviors should determine health authorities to treat this subject differently. To expand the COVID-19 vaccines uptake, they should be in an ongoing dialogue with all population categories and, remarkably, with those belonging to vulnerable communities, originated mostly in LICs. Education is imperative for vaccination, and it would ought to be on the schedule of any state, for being assimilated into health strategies and policies.