Human Development and Quality of Institutions in Highly Developed Countries

Abstract

The article concentrates on the problem of influence of quality of institutional system in the context of utilizing the potential of knowledge-based economy on the human development in highly developed countries. In order to measure the quality of institutional system a synthetic measure based on multivariate analysis techniques was proposed. To obtain the institutional measure TOPSIS method was applied. To quantify the institutional factors the data from Fraser Institute was used. As diagnostic variables of quality of institutions 29 variables qualified to four aspects of national institutional systems were used: a) formal regulations influencing entrepreneurship; b) effectiveness of juridical system in keeping low level of transaction costs and supporting effectiveness of market mechanism; c) competitive pressure and effectiveness of labour markets; d) financial markets institutions as a stimulator of development of enterprises with high growth potential. Human Development Index proposed within United Nations Development Programme was used for measuring the quality of life. The estimation of relation between institutions and human development was made with econometric dynamic panel model. The estimation was made for 24 European Union countries for the years 2004-2010. The econometric analysis shows the positive influence of quality of institutions on human development in the context of knowledge-based economy in developed countries.

Multiple Criteria Analysis of European Union Agriculture

“…Most of economic phenomena can be characterized as complex and multivariate factors from the perspective of description or quantification (Balcerzak, 2009;Biczkowski, et al 2014;Pietrzak, et al 2014;Majewska, 2015, 2016;Zielenkiewicz, 2014Zielenkiewicz, , 2015Balcerzak and Pietrzak, 2016a, 2016c, 2016dPietrzak and Balcerzak, 2016a). As a result multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) or multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methodology are currently commonly used in international comparative studies (Kuc, 2012a;Mościbrodzka, 2014;Jurkowska, 2014;Łyszczarz, 2016;Jurkowska, 2014).…”

Is the Regional Divergence a Price for the International Convergence? The Case of the Visegrad Group

“…The composite indicators are very convenient tools as they: (i) summarise multidimensional realities, (ii) are easier to interpret than a set of many separate indicators, (iii) reduce the visible size of a set of indicators without dropping the underlying information base, (iv) enable users to compare complex dimensions effectively (OECD JRC, 2008;Santos, Santos, 2014). Thus a growing interest in composite indicators should not be surprising as they may be applied in many different fields: innovation (Żelazny, Pietrucha, 2017;Balcerzak, Pietrzak, 2017a), health care system performance (Łyszczarz, 2016), real estate markets analysis (Małkowska, Głuszak, 2016) countries' competitiveness (Kruk, Waśniewska, 2017), socioeconomic development (Bartkowiak-Bakun, 2017), quality of institutions (Balcerzak, Pietrzak, 2017b), sustainable development , standard of living (Kuc, 2017) and many others. However, one has to be aware of the fact that they are not free of defects: (i) may be disused to support a desired policy, (ii) may disguise serious falling in some dimensions if a construction process is not transparent, (iii) are sensitive to normalization, aggregation and weighting methods, (iv) a selection of indicators and their weights may be subjective (OECD JRC, 2008;Ravallion, 2010, Paroulo, Saisana, Saltelli, 2013Santos, Santos, 2014).…”

Urbanization and start-up rates in different geographies: Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden

“…These countries are interesting cases as they are quite similar in terms of institutions and culture 3 (Koopmans 2010;Balcerzak and Pietrzak 2017), but they represent distinct national settlement patterns: the Netherlands and Belgium are among the most urbanized and densely populated countries of the OECD, while Sweden is a clear opposite. Performing the analysis for the three countries enables us to assess whether access to cities has a Bgenericm ediating effect or that it differs dependent on the geography of settlements in these countries.…”

“…Most official institutions, such as bankruptcy laws and property rights, are similar in the three countries (Koopmans 2010;Balcerzak and Pietrzak 2017). We therefore focus on the Bsoft^side of the institutional environment-the entrepreneurial culture.…”

“…Sweden is a clear opposite in this respect. At the same time, the countries are relatively similar in their institutional environments (Koopmans 2010;Balcerzak and Pietrzak 2017).…”