PurposeThe study aims to compare India's public health expenditure at the international and state levels. The paper also empirically examines the regional disparities in NRHM spending across the 21 selected states of India.Design/methodology/approachThe tools of absolute β-and σ-convergence are used in the analysis to test the regional convergence. The average annual growth rate across the states is the dependent variable for β-convergence, and time is the second dependent variable but is used for s-convergence. In contrast, the initial value of NRHM expenditure and the coefficient of variation of NRHM expenditure are used as independent variables, respectively. Descriptive statistics are also used for the study. The data are annual and cover the panel from 2007 to 2020.FindingsThe study attests to the hypothesis of β-and σ-convergence for the selected states in the period mentioned. The observed convergence in NRHM expenditure is due to the shift in the government's attention from the non-high focus high focus states to high states through the national rural health mission policy. The coefficient of variation across the states also shows a declining trend and provides the robustness of the σ-convergence.Originality/valueAs far as the literature is concerned, none of the existing studies examines the convergence of a public health expenditure scheme like the National Rural Health Mission across the Indian states by applying the techniques of β-and σ-convergence. The novelty of the study is using the newly updated dataset and validating the convergence hypotheses in the National Rural Health Mission expenditure case.
Women’s participation and technological innovation have a crucial role in ensuring ecological stability and environmental sustainability in the long-run. However, their relationship with environmental sustainability is an ongoing debate with diverse opinions across the continuum. The present study focuses on the empirical relevance of this debate based on the theoretical underpinnings of ecofeminism and techno-centrism, using panel data on 37 OECD countries for the period 1990–2019. The paper employs the Pedroni test to check for cointegration among the variables, Pooled Mean Group (PMG) to estimate the model, and the Dumitrescu-Hurlin test to investigate the pairwise causality among the variables. The study constructs two models, based on ecofeminism and techno-centrism and finds that both gender employment equality and R&D expenditure, which represent the ecofeminist and techno-centric arguments respectively, have a negative and significant impact on environmental degradation measured by the ecological footprint. This suggests that equality of women in the labour markets and technological innovation through R&D expenditure are both potential tools for ensuring environmental sustainability. The empirical estimation also confirms the existence of an N-shaped environmental Kuznets curve between economic growth and environmental degradation in the case of selected OECD countries in both ecofeminist and techno-centric models.
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