Poverty is a universal reality, and no one can deny the omnipresence of it all over the world. It is considered as the most harmful economic and social problem of human beings since their creation. It affects individuals as well as society as a whole in a very destructive way, and it is considered that poverty is the mother of all human rights violations. Perhaps no one would argue against the notion that microfinance can be a very useful apparatus in human, social, economic, political and national development. Microfinance has been established to fill the gap of a missing credit market for the poor. Among all other anti-poverty strategies, it has become one of the most important and successful tools for poverty elimination throughout the world. In this study, we investigate the impact of microfinance on poverty alleviation for the economy of Pakistan. The literacy is very poor for the area of Pakistan, so our research will help policy makers in making the right decisions in order to help the people that are living below the poverty line. Primary data of 300 households from Khushhali Microfinance Bank Limited were collected. The findings reveal that microfinance imparts a vital role in poverty eradication where the poverty level has decreased from 42.67% in comparison household (CHH) to 29.33% in the program household (PHH). Finally, it unveils the fact that there is a negative association between the provision of microfinance and poverty level of the household. The availability of micro financing facilities to the poor has declined the poverty rate from 42.67 percent to 29.33 percent. The Logistic Regression model implies that poverty has a negative association with the duration of microfinance, education and existence of a market in the locality, whereas it is positively related to family size and gender of the respondent.

The global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has spread worldwide, affecting almost all countries and territories. COVID-19 continues to impact various spheres of our life, such as the economy, industries, global market, agriculture, human health, health care, and many others. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the COVID-lockdowns on people’s mental health in Greece. A descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted in several urban, semi-urban and rural areas. The survey of 252 Greek people was conducted in spring 2022, and 46.8% of them were female and the other 53.2% were male. Ages were between 19 and 60 years old. Some of the main findings were that most of the participants feel their mental health got worse than before (about 80%), participants with kids were more affected than those who did not have any kids because they had bigger responsibilities and the pandemic might have caused them a lot of problems to deal with. The higher the income, the less they are affected, and people whose jobs did not change dramatically were also less likely to not be much mentally affected. Moreover, the percentage of smokers whose mental health became worse was greater than that among those who did not smoke. The same happened with those who consumed alcohol. Finally, we used the GBM algorithm to find three important predictors and we applied k-means to have a clear picture of the different clusters and how a number of participants are connected according to their answers.

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate students' engagement using Google Educational Applications as educational social media tools to support teamwork. The participants of the study were a cohort of Computer Science students enrolled in the State-of-Art Technologies in Education (SOAT) online course at the University of Eastern Finland. The data was collected through pre- and post-Google Educational Collaborative Applications experience questionnaires and an interview. Based on the findings, it is evident that social media, and more specifically Google Educational Applications, can support social-constructivist models of pedagogy and that Google Educational Applications (as social media tools) have the potential to play an important role in the future of learning environments. The chapter provides experimental evidence that the use of Google Educational Applications can increase student engagement, and thus, Google Educational Applications can be used as an educational tool to support teamwork.

Inflation rates and their convergence within Euro area have been a major concern, since well before the advent of the single currency. Inflation differentials are a normal phenomenon in any monetary union and even in long-established monetary unions. The aim of this research is to examine the main factors of inflation differentials in the Euro-zone for the period 1999–2018. Our empirical estimates appear to suggest that a one-percentage-point increase in the positive output gap typically leads to an increase of about 20 basis points in the inflation rate of EMU countries. We also find three structural breaks, in 2004, 2008 and in 2010. Since the monetary policy of the European Central Bank is geared at maintaining low and stable inflation, the productivity growth should be increased, and the real effective exchange rates should be decreased and become more homogeneous among EMU. Therefore, countries’ inflation differentials may become less persistent.

This study investigates the role of governance in inclusive human development in the case of twenty-four selected Asian countries, using panel data for the time period from 2010 to 2017. The inequality-adjusted human development index, developed by the United Nation Development Program, has been used as a proxy for inclusive human development. In addition, six indicators of governance have been used as independent variables in a regression model, along with three control variables. We have tested the stationarity of our data using panel unit root tests such as Leviv-Lin-Chu and Augmented Dickey Fuller. The Pearson correlation matrix helps us find out the correlation among variables. The findings show a mixed level of correlation among the variables (i.e., high, low, and moderate). Furthermore, our results show that a strong causal relationship among the variables exists. One of the most important findings is that there is bi-directional causality between the inclusive human development index (IHDI) and development expenditure. The IHDI causes more government investment in development projects, whereas more development expenditure in the country achieves a higher IHDI. Trade openness and development expenditure have a bi-directional causal relationship. Finally, economic governance causes political governance in the case of our selected Asian countries.