Background In recent years, measuring and evaluating the efficiency of health systems has been explored in the context of seeking resources to ensure the sustainability of ‘countries’ health and social systems and addressing various crises in the health sector. The study aims to quantify and compare the efficiency of OECD health systems in 2000, 2008, and 2016. The contribution to research in the field of efficiency in the healthcare system can be seen in the application of Dynamic Network Data Envelopment Analysis (DNDEA), which help us to analyse not only the overall efficiency of the healthcare system but analyse the overall efficiency as the result of the efficiencies of individual interconnected areas (public and medical care area). By applying the DNDEA model, we can realise the analysis not only within one year, but we can find out if the measures and improvements taken in the healthcare sector have a positive impact on its efficiency in a later period (eight-year interval). Methods The analysis focuses on assessing the efficiency of the health systems of OECD countries over three periods: 2000, 2008, and 2016. Data for this study were derived from the existing OECD database, which provides aggregated data on OECD countries on a comparable basis. In this way, it was possible to compare different countries whose national health statistics may have their characteristics. The input-oriented Dynamic Network Data Envelopment Analysis model was used for data processing. The efficiency of OECD health systems has been analysed and evaluated comprehensively and also separately in two divisions: public health sub-division and medical care sub-division. The analysis combines the application of conventional and unconventional methods of measuring efficiency in the health sector. Results The results for the public health sub-division, medical care sub-division and overall health system for OECD countries under the assumption of constant returns to scale indicate that the average overall efficiency was 0.8801 in 2000, 0.8807 in 2008 and 0.8472 in 2016. The results of the input-oriented model with the assumption of constant returns to scale point to the overall average efficiency of health systems at the level of 0.8693 during the period. According to the Malmquist Index results, the OECD countries improved the efficiency over the years, with performance improvements of 19% in the public health division and 8% in the medical care division. Conclusions The results of the study are beneficial for health policymakers to assess and compare health systems in countries and to develop strategic national and regional health plans. Similarly, the result will support the development of international benchmarks in this area. The issue of health efficiency is an intriguing one that could be usefully explored in further research. A greater focus on combining non-parametric and parametric models could produce interesting findings for further research. The consistency in the publication and updating of the data on health statistics would help us establish a greater degree of accuracy.

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) approaches, frameworks, and technologies have gained an increasing relevance in order to gain sustainable and competitive advantages for industrial enterprises and for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), as well. Contrary to previous studies, which are mainly focused on companies, we conducted a questionnaire-based survey on inhabitants, in an attempt to examine general awareness about I4.0 concepts, in the region of South India. Our findings revealed a rather poor informational level of I4.0 concept and its components, which consequently leads to inadequate future actions and expectations. Moreover, respondents with prior information about I4.0 framework tend to have rather positive opinions and expectations of possible future trends. We emphasize that insufficient knowledge of the potential workforce regarding I4.0 concepts, especially in a region with ascending demographic development, can be considered as one of the main barriers for a successful and sustainable future development towards the 4th industrial revolution.

Dynamic development of payment cards' use has been observed during the recent years in all the European Union (EU) Member States, as evidenced by the growth of issued cards, ATM, EFTPOS terminals, and the number and value of payments made through them. The aim of this paper is to assess whether the increasing number of payment cards and terminals really result in higher efficiency. In this case, the efficiency has been measured by means of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) using the data of the 27 EU countries, in 2005 and in 2015, namely non-radial and non-oriented Super SBM model under the assumption of a variable return to scale. The principal reasons of changes in efficiencies between 2005 and 2015 have been analyzed by means of the Malmquist index. The results of DEA analysis confirm the assumption that if an increase in a number of devices is not supported by their direct use by clients, it will only have negative impact on the banking sector in a form of efficiency lost.

The impact of corporate intangibles on a company’s market value has been a widely debated topic. A large body of literature has separately examined the industry’s effect- or firm-specific attributes, such as industry type, company size, company age, or indebtedness and profitability, on the motivation to disclose information on intangible assets, but without considering a comprehensive view. This paper examines the role intangible assets play in a firm’s market valuation besides other firm-specific characteristics. The reducted dataset we use in this study comprises 250 publicly traded companies operating in four different business sectors in France, Germany, and Switzerland for the ten years from 2009 to 2018. Based on the panel data regression models, the study provides an extension of previous knowledge about the effect intangible assets may have on the investors’ view of a company’s value, where the value added of this paper is the empirical evidence of a possible link between the intangible assets’ disclosure and the market value of German, French, and Swiss enterprises. The importance of our contribution lies in a comparative analysis carried out to reveal substantial differences in the impact of intangible assets and innovation activity on the market value firms in three European countries and across four industry sectors. Although the results show the positive impact of intangible assets on the companies’ market value, we suggest that investors still assess companies based on their profitability rather than considering the information on intangible assets the enterprises disclose in their financial statements.

Innovation is the key to the growth of each business in a fast-changing world. Innovations affect financial activities because the successful innovation opens the new markets, gives the opportunity to reduce costs or introduce new products and services with a higher profit margin. Each organization, institution, enterprise or individual can be innovative. Innovations may not be implemented only in large enterprises, but also in medium or small. The aim of this paper is to innovate and optimize the polishing process in production plant with variant production. In this paper case study is used as research method which includes measurements and observation. The paper is focused on five variants of one product. We obtained the required data by measuring in a manufacturing plant in southern India in Madurai. At the end the results are summarized, and the optimization of the polishing process is proposed.