This study investigated how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in a country perceive major global risks. The aim was to explore how country attributes and circumstances affect SME assessments of the likelihood, impacts, and rankings of global risks, and to find out if SME risk assessment and rankings differ from the global rankings. Data were gathered using an online survey of manufacturing SMEs in Turkey. The results show that global economic risks and geopolitical risks are of major concern for SMEs, and environmental risks are at the bottom of their ranking. Among the economic risks, fiscal crises in key economies and high structural unemployment or underemployment were found to be the highest risks for the SMEs. Failure of regional or global governance, failure of national governance, and interstate conflict with regional consequences were found to be among the top geopolitical risks for the SMEs. The SMEs considered the risk of largescale cyber-attacks and massive incident of data fraud/theft to be relatively higher than other global technological risks. Profound social instability and failure of urban planning were among the top societal risks for the SMEs. Although the global environmental and disaster risks were ranked lowest on the list, man-made environmental damage and disasters and major natural hazard-induced disasters were ranked the highest among this group of risks. Overall, the results show that SMEs at a country level, for example Turkey, perceive global risks differently than the major global players.
In many developing countries limited health budgets are a serious problem. Innovative ways to raise funds for the provision of health services, for example, through health care insurance, have a high priority. Health care insurance for rural households shields such patients from unexpected high costs of care. However, there are questions about whether, and how much, rural households are willing to pay to purchase such insurance, as well as the factors determining willingness to pay. In recent years the Iranian government has tried to improve health and medical services to rural areas through a health insurance program. This study was conducted to estimate rural households' demand and willingness to pay for health insurance. A contingent valuation method (CVM) was applied using an iterative bidding game technique. Data has been collected from a sample of 2,139 households across the country.
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