Tourism is one of the most important industries in the Mediterranean countries, which strongly contributes to the economic activity, capital investment and job creation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants influencing profitability of hotel companies in selected Mediterranean countries. Thereby, dynamic panel data models are estimated on an extensive dataset for the period from 2007 to 2015. The paper provides evidence on differences among internal profitability determinants of hotel companies operating in tourism competitive countries. The results indicate that the cash flow to operating revenue has a statistically significant and positive impact on profitability in all observed countries. The total asset turnover ratio is significant for all countries except Portugal, while labour productivity is significant only for Spain, which is also the country with the highest turnover per employee. The solvency ratio is positively related to profitability, except for Greece as the most indebted country. Size proved to be significant for hotels in Spain and Portugal, while age is the variable by which the countries mostly differ, as findings show a different impact of underlying variable on hotel profitability. Findings provide information to shareholders that would ensure profitability of hotel companies operating in different countries. ARTICLE HISTORY

The main goal of this paper is to elaborate the importance of health literacy in cost-effective utilization of health care services which influence the efficiency of the entire health care sector. In order to complement the theoretical framework of the economic implications and the circular influence of health literacy on the economy, an empirical analysis was carried out using S-TOFHLA. The results suggest that the patients' personal characteristics and the accessibility to health care services influence the level of health literacy which affects the health care costs.

This paper investigates the factors that influence the relative efficiency of higher education institutions of economic orientation. The empirical analysis is carried out on 31 higher educational institutions of economic orientation in Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, in three phases. In the first phase, relative efficiency of observed institutions is evaluated for three main areas of their activities: teaching, research and international activity. In the second phase, higher education institutions are clustered based on relative efficiency results of each individual area of their activity. In the last, third phase, key association factors of a particular cluster are determined using univariate binary logistic regression and odds for transition to a more favourable cluster are defined. The results indicate that odds for positioning in the more efficient cluster are higher in public institutions than in private ones, in institutions with more published professional papers, in those with higher expenditures per faculty, the larger number of enrolled students per faculty, as well as in those with more visiting researchers. The proposed model can serve as a design guideline for education policies and as a moderation guideline for national authorities.

This article presents a novel and comprehensive approach for the thermoeconomic evaluation of subcritical and supercritical isobutane cycles for geothermal temperatures of Tgeo = 100–200 °C. The isobutane cycles are optimized with respect to the maximum net power or minimum levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). Cycle optimization is also included, using a minimum superheat temperature to avoid turbine erosion, which is usually neglected in the literature. The results show that economic optimums are found in the far superheated region, while thermal optimums are obtained with dry saturated or with slightly superheated vapor at the turbine inlet (ΔTsup < 5 °C). Supercritical cycles achieve better thermal performance than subcritical cycles for Tgeo = 179–200 °C. Internal heat recuperation improves the cycle performance: the net power output increases and the LCOE decreases, but specific installation costs (SICs) increase due to the additional heat exchanger. For geothermal temperatures of Tgeo = 120 → 150 °C, the costs are LCOE = 100 → 80 USD2022/MWh and SIC = 7000 → 5250 USD2022/kW, while for geothermal temperatures of Tgeo = 150 → 200 °C, the estimated costs are LCOE = 80 → 70 USD2022/MWh and SIC = 5250 → 4600 USD2022/kW.

The aim of this paper is to analyse students’ perceptions of teaching from three different perspectives: students’ interest, teacher and course assessment. We use ordinal logistic model to quantify the effects of grade, pass rate and class size on results of evaluation of undergraduate and graduate courses held during the summer and winter semesters in the academic year 2016/2017. The data were collected using a standardised online questionnaire. Research results indicate that on the observed economic HEI, both teacher and course assessment is positively and significantly affected by student’s achieved grade, and by class size. Moreover, we find large and significant difference between students’ interest in study programmes delivered in Croatian and those delivered in English. Students enrolled in English study programme value pass rate over grade, as opposed to students enrolled in Croatian study programme. We attribute this to the different motivation of students, that is, students enrolled in English programme are more prone to participation in student mobility programmes.