A b s t r a c t. The paper concerns the convergence of selected world stock exchanges from the point of view of their development in the context of geographical and economic distance between them. It presents the methodological approach which points up the necessity of taking into account spatial and economic connections among stock markets in convergence analyses. The research includes 46 largest trading floors analyzed in the period of 2004-2012. The empirical data refer to six diagnostic variables acknowledged as the important determinants of the development of stock markets. K e y w o r d s: stock exchanges, convergence, physical and economic distance, connectivity matrix, spatial panel models. J E L Classification: C10, C12, C58, G15.

Objective: Stroke is associated with a high risk of death and cardiovascular events. Rehabilitation therapy is critical for functional recovery, to reduce hospital readmissions, all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, and stroke recurrence (long-term outcomes). Post-stroke spasticity may prevent effective recovery by restricting mobility. AbobotulinumtoxinA is an adjunctive therapy to physical therapy for post-stroke spasticity, but its long-term effects are unknown. The objective was to model the long-term clinical and economic outcomes of abobotulinumtoxinA for post-stroke spasticity.Methods: Effects of abobotulinumtoxinA on treating post-stroke spasticity and evidence linking functional outcomes with long-term outcomes were collected in a focused literature review. A model was developed to estimate health benefits on long-term outcomes, direct medical costs, life- and quality-adjusted lifeyears for abobotulinumtoxinA injections plus rehabilitation therapy compared with rehabilitation therapy alone, from a UK perspective over a 10-year time period.Results: AbobotulinumtoxinA + rehabilitation therapy led to a risk reduction of 8.8% for all-cause mortality, and an increase of 13% in life-years and 59% in quality-adjusted life-years compared with rehabilitation therapy alone. AbobotulinumtoxinA + rehabilitation therapy was considered cost-effective compared with rehabilitation therapy alone (incremental cost-effectiveness ratio: £24,602).Conclusion: AbobotulinumtoxinA + rehabilitation therapy may improve long-term outcomes, including post-stroke survival, while being cost-effective for the treatment of post-stroke spasticity.

The aim of the paper is to discuss the course of development of methodology of economic convergence analyses, which points up the necessity of taking into consideration spatial connections among regions in regional growth models. It presents empirical models of β-convergence concerning the economic growth of European regions using various methodological conceptions. In the paper the models offered by spatial econometrics are recommended. The empirical data refer to per capita GDP across the European Union regions at a NUTS-2 level over the period 1995-2009 (annual data).

The paper concerns the measurement of the dependence between economic spatial and also spatio-temporal processes at various levels of data aggregation. The considerations refer to the investigations confirming efficiency of the so-called quasi-congruent spatial model as a tool of the measurement of the dependence between economic processes. The main problem of the paper is to discuss such a description of the spatial and spatio-temporal connections, which would be adequate to express the autodependence of the investigated processes. The application of the economic distance, which characterizes the similarity of the regions on the ground of the values of the analyzed processes, is proposed. K e y w o r d s: quasi-congruent spatio-temporal model, autodependence, connectivity matrix, economic distance.

The paper presents a spatial approach to the analysis of the relationship between air pollution, economic growth, and renewable energy consumption. The economic growth of every country is based on the energy consumption that leads to an increase in national productivity. Using renewable energy is very important for the environmental protection and security of the earth’s resources. Promoting environmentally friendly operations increases awareness of sustainable development, which is currently a major concern of state governments. In this study, we explored the influence of economic growth and the share of renewable energy out of total energy consumption on CO2 emissions. The study was based on the classical environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and enriched with the spatial dependencies. In particular, we determined the spatial spillovers in the form of the indirect effects of changes in renewable energy consumption of a specific country on the CO2 emissions of neighboring countries. A neighborhood in this study was defined by ecological development similarity. The neighborhood matrix was constructed based on the values of the ecological footprint measure. We used the spatio-temporal Durbin model, with which the indirect effects were determined in relation to the spatially lagged renewable energy consumption. The results of our study also show the strength of the effects caused by imitating actions from the states with high levels of environmental protection. The study was conducted using data for 75 selected countries from the period of 2013–2019. Cumulative spatial and spatio-temporal effects allowed us to determine (1) the countries with the greatest impact on others and (2) the countries that follow the leading ones.