ABSTRACT. We are strongly observing the winds of change all around economic world, but especially in Europe. This article offers some reflections on crisis management in European countries. The EU countries runs in an open economy due the globalization, and even if they are becoming increasingly interrelated, while the economies need diverse, specialized resources, and move from the industrial stage towards the service-based economy, they are increasingly dependent on foreign (re)sources and energy. We have to have a glance to the plans implemented at the European level if there are effective and if the subsidization of energy prices is a (poisoned) gift that nationals governments give to all citizens and companies in their own economies. Is this national state intervention in the economy good? Which of the national states applies the most suitable model for solving this particularly acute problem? For multiple reasons, this national state interventions in the economy seems saving them, but could it not have a boomerang effect in the future? Here are some serious questions to which we will try to find out answers that will support the managerial activity according with the theory of a free-market economy faced with the scarcity of resources. In the management of (re)sources crises, which managers face nowadays, new challenges appear, and managers must solve it. We propose in this article to show which methods and techniques, or their combined versions may be successful, and respectively we intend to identify certain tendencies which runs in the present context and in terms of other variables, related to the increase of efficiency in management practice. We want as the main goal to rise the reliability, the quality of decisions to verify the predictions and the procedure adopted trough the management sciences, especially into a practical context perform an increase in the profitability of organizations.

ABSTRACT. In the digital era where both governments and companies are in mainly focused on sustainable development, big data is considered as one of the key factors for success. Big data helps various entities willing to implement core changes in order to become a data-driven organization, to collect and analyse data from various sources in order to determine root causes of failures, anomalies and issues but also to improve efficiency and mark the roadmap to obtain a sustainable development process. As big data analytics is the key for obtaining competitive development, sustainable development is considered as a constant improvement of existing processes focused to fulfil the needs from the present without affecting exploitation of future needs by discovering possible solutions to existing problems and achieve a better and sustainable future. The scope of this paper is to define how the use of big data analytics increases innovation in European countries, how research and development sector involves the use of big data, resulting in an increased competitiveness and the achievement of sustainable development goals. In this paper we analysed the link between the evolution of the percentage of companies that make use of big data analytics and patent applications to the European Patent Office and correlated the collected statistical data to find and prove the relation between the two datasets. We expect the results to show that, based on statistics between 2018 and 2020, the countries where the percentage of big data analytics usage is low, the level of patent applications to the European Patent Office would be low, and in countries with a higher level of use of big data analytics the level of patent applications to the European Patent Office would be high.

ABSTRACT. Recent climate changes - related to the resulting pandemic phenomena - and recent international war events have highlighted - in the present - all the frailties of the current concept of globalization, the use of which has been in the slang for thirty years now, spreading since the 1990s. The initial idealistic dimension of the concept of globalization had - over time - to be measured against the final result, which took the form of an unbalanced liberalism characterized by a common worldwide increase of health, economic and social inequalities (to the detriment of the many) and a parallel centralization of wealth (to the benefit of a few). Moreover, the current international economic crises, characterized by a common resurgence of the inflationary phenomenon, lead to the revaluation of the principles of an economy that is autartic, self-sufficient and thus economically independent of foreign countries. The foregoing imposes a duty - even in business economics - to review business models, proposed over time, questioning them, in search of new archetypes that are indispensable in order to pursue equitable and sustainable progress. What has been stated represents the research question that will be developed in the paper following a methodological approach with a theoretical-aprioristic profile. The paper identifies Diversity Management - a theory born in the United States in the mid-1990s - as a possible answer to the advanced research question. The study of the model, its development and potential could represent an appropriate proposal for overcoming the critical issues previously highlighted: an advanced contribution in business economics that could very easily find areas of application in other scientific disciplines as well.

ABSTRACT. In the last few years, a significant number of banks have turned their attention to the management of the traditional banking processes, as the entire workflow was frequently considered to be redundant and difficult to administer. Convenience and accuracy are two enviable characteristics of any banking operation. Accordingly, embedding the digital sphere in the banking environment allows banks to keep up with the fast pace of customer expectations and with the adoption of an effective work approach. Employees are able to only deal with important activities to a greater extent, letting advanced technologies accomplish the time-consuming work. In this regard, an extensive analysis was carried out, outlining the main activities that are operated in the front office and in the back office departments. Every activity performed in the front office has a correspondent in the back office, thus revealing the importance of respecting the team value and the cyclic flow of processes. This research paper focuses on several similar areas of the two departments, including bank-client interaction and communication, personalization of the bank services, online banking related activities, as well as complaint management. As follows, the aim of this paper is to assess the current evolution of the usual activities of the bankers in different departments. In order for this research to offer relevant insights, a literature review was conducted together with the author’s own considerations and perspectives regarding the commercial banks in Romania. Certainly, the banking activity revolution is getting closer, but the adoption depends on the degree of the digital acceptance of the banks.

ABSTRACT. Business and basketball organizations, although different from the point of view of their activity, have various similar characteristics. One of these characteristics is the fact that leaders can be found in both business and basketball teams. In addition, leadership is a much-researched aspect in both business and sports (basketball) areas. Furthermore, leadership can be categorized in various types, as the research on this topic has shown throughout the years. One of these types is the so-called servant leadership, which has been proven to be an important characteristic for basketball coaches and business leaders alike to have. This type of leadership can help coaches and business leaders become more effective, it can allow them to help develop others more efficiently and thus, it can help them in gaining the trust of their followers, which can then lead to an improvement on the part of the team´s performance. That is why the aim of this paper is to provide an insight into how and why servant leadership can be considered an important characteristic of basketball coaches and business leaders. By undergoing a literature review analysis on the topic of servant leadership in basketball and business, various similar aspects between coaches and business leaders have been identified. The results show that basketball coaches and business leaders are more easily followed, trusted, and respected if they apply a servant leadership style. More so, as some researchers pointed out, this servant leadership characteristic of basketball coaches and business leaders is yet to be fully accepted as a model for successful leadership in sport and not enough research has been undergone in order to examine how servant leadership affects the organizational culture. This can be considered as the main reasons why further research on the topic is needed.

ABSTRACT. The cost center represents one of the most important responsibility centers and its manager is mostly responsible for achieving operational efficiency and minimizing product costs. To cover the cost accounting control function, each cost center must be an independent area of responsibility. This means that the scope of cost centers must be clearly defined and separated from each other. They are also used for various internal and external accounting purposes, to determine an appropriate type of activity as a measure of cost causality, and to allocate costs to operational activities. The cost center structure of a company must be designed in such a way that there are cost centers for all operational units, meaning that one cannot opt out of setting up cost centers for certain sub-units in the company. Across all company units, cost centers are operated for various accounting and control purposes, such as: classification, planning and allocation objects. A fundamental stage in the calculation and analysis of costs is represented by the classification of costs that can be done in relation to several criteria: the nature of the expenses that determine the costs, their relationship with the object of calculation, the activities performed, the behavior of the costs, the usefulness in making decisions, the process of production or the time period to which it refers. This study brings a theoretical and practical contribution to the general considerations of cost center management and state through a feasible example, the influence of the cost center tariff as a support in the make or buy decision.

ABSTRACT. Penetrating export markets requires firms to access appropriate resources and formulate and implement appropriate market strategies. However, the low participation of Small and Medium Size Enterprises in exports in Indonesia suggests that firms may lack the necessary resources and capabilities to achieve global competitiveness. Following the resource-based view (RBV), this study analyzes the role of organizational resources, firm capabilities, export marketing strategy, and competitiveness on the export performance of firms in Indonesia. The study collects data from 200 enterprises in Indonesia in 2021 to create variables to capture organizational resources, organizational capabilities, export marketing strategy, firm competitiveness, and export performance. Using a fractional logistics method, Ordinary Least Squares, and a Generalized Linear Model, we test our four hypotheses. A set of control variables help to observe if firms can improve performance by having a special export team, having a logistic partner, participating in trade mobility events, and being labor intensive. The findings illustrate that for small firms, having a special export team, having a logistic partner, participating in trade events, increasing capabilities, and enjoying competitiveness are crucial to boosting export performance. Small firms can increase exports, profits, and returns on export-related assets by improving their export marketing strategy. On the other hand, large firms mainly benefit from possessing the right export marketing strategy, having a competitive advantage, having a large share of labor-intensive staff, and having a larger share of output-oriented export markets. Large firms do not seem to benefit from trade mobility. The findings suggest that in the early stages of global expansion, capabilities, competitiveness, and experience are crucial. However, as firms grow, strategy, size, and competitiveness become crucial points to export success. We did not find evidence that organizational resources related to exports have a direct impact on export performance, but it affects exports through indirect channels.

ABSTRACT. Since the covid-19 pandemic outbreak, resilience has become a ubiquitous word on worldwide agendas at every level (individual, organizational, national, or global) and aspect of human life (political, economic, social, or technological). However, organizational resilience – and particularly a business’s ability to bounce back (stronger) following disruptions – is not something new. The term emerged (in the business and management literature) several decades ago, while its content (the process and outcome of organizational resilience) has likely been embraced (more or less articulated as such) by any business in search of survival and success. Although, the covid-19 (pandemic) has arguably challenged organizations/businesses and their resilience as never before. External pressures (from bottlenecks and shortages on the supply chain to new/different consumer needs and demands to be fulfilled) have combined with internal ones (to conduct operations and lead employees under the new circumstances) – all against the background of changing regulatory settings (varying from safety measures to be met to temporary closure of businesses) – in unprecedented ways. The paper aims to map and summarize the organizational resilience research landscape in relation to (the challenges of) the covid-19 pandemic. SCOPUS database was used to extract the document results answering the search query and meeting the selection criteria. Following a preliminary descriptive analysis based on SCOPUS’s Analyze search results tool, a thorough bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer (version 1.6.18) has been performed (based on both bibliographic and text data). The results show several areas of interest covering multiple angles at the intersections between organizational resilience and covid-19 – which serve as a foundation for future research: supply chain management (global supply chain, risk management, business continuity, robustness), performance (capability, agility, collaboration, trust), owner/entrepreneur (government, sme, business model, adversity), leadership (transformation, communication, health, tourism), efficiency (investor, growth, benefit, post-covid), policy (governance, community, csr, education).

ABSTRACT. The development of an old and even a new business is often-times a situation in which the managers are spending important amounts of money without any guarantee of the business success. Where do these funds come from? From other businesses, from the business owner savings, from business angels or from other sources, be it legal or illegal. The current paper, which constitute a combination between literature review and secondary data analysis, is tackling the several hypotheses, among the most important being the one that some of the small and medium size enterprises that are active within a business environment could have been founded and funded by illegal activity results ore by people involved or previously involved in such unlawful activities. The article opens with a brief introduction, followed by a comprehensive literature analysis that will underline form a theoretical perspective the concepts of criminal activities, will present different types of criminal activities and show how they might be linked to the development of SMEs’. The second part of the paper is covers the practical component of the article and the author will show, based on secondary data analysis, that some criminal or illegal activities can often be found within the area of SMEs’ and that some of the income derived from the above mentioned illegal activities can or are already diverted towards the development of legit businesses, in order to take the money from the dark side of business to the legal one. This article has several limitations and conclusions that must be considered when covering such a topic and the author will underline the theoretical, managerial, and practical implications.

ABSTRACT. As a consequence of the financial crisis of 2007-2009 and of the Covid pandemic, the international trade was significantly hit in terms of export and import flows. The whole macroeconomic context was negatively impacted during those last crises. In this paper we aimed to analyse the correlations between the trends of macroeconomic variables during the last decade and the commercial deficits of the Central and Eastern European countries. The selected macroeconomic variables are those that are significantly related to the commercial deficits, namely GDP growth, inflation, public debt, public deficit, interest rate and labour productivity. These variables display a high correlation with the foreign trade expressed as exports and imports. But the correlations are not the same for all CEE countries. During crises periods, these correlations often change and each country of this CEE region reacts differently to specific external shocks. Trade was significantly and negatively impacted by the last financial crisis and by Covid pandemic crisis, while economic growth rates, inflation rates, labour productivity public finances and interest rates have different trends in the CEE region according to specific conditions of each country and the measures adopted by the national authorities in time of crises. Based on the correlations between the trends of the macroeconomic variables and the developments of exports and imports in this area, we can design some important policy recommendations for the economic policy which needs to be implemented in those countries in order to overcome these difficulties generated by the increasing commercial deficits during the last decade.

ABSTRACT. Trade facilitates long-term economic development, while countries are looking to stimulate trade flows by reduction of trade barriers, dealing trade agreements and improving their institutional quality. The role of good institutional quality is driven by the fact that countries with appropriate levels of governance are trading more. This study investigates the influence of governance on bilateral trade between the European Union and Japan. In the last two decades, the bilateral trade between the EU-28 and Japan has seen an upward trend, while in terms of governance there are some differences between these two trade partners. The empirical results based on the OLS regression confirm statistically that some aspects of governance matter for the EU's trade with Japan. The findings reveal that the EU's institutional quality has a higher influence on bilateral trade than the Japanese one. While the Japan's rule of law has a positive impact on both total trade and European exports, four of the six variables of EU's governance negatively influence bilateral trade. At the same time, the largest negative influence on European exports is manifested by EU's regulatory quality. On the other hand, Japan's control of corruption has the biggest negative impact on EU's imports from Japan. As a part of the multifaceted relations between the EU and Japan, both trading partners should invest more time and resources in improving their governance, especially those aspects related to excessive EU regulation, effectiveness of European government’s policies and a higher legislative freedom for Japanese firms in order to stimulate their international activity. These findings will help both policy makers to design appropriate trade policies and to sign profitable future trade agreements for both partners.

ABSTRACT. Entrepreneurship holds an important place in a country's economy, being essential for its sustainable economic development. Its role is also reflected socially by the contribution it makes to the personal development of individuals, through the formation of an entrepreneurial mindset, essential for their ability to address the economic, social and environmental challenges of recent decades. The decision to start a business is not an easy one and is influenced by several factors relating to the personality traits and individual characteristics of the future entrepreneur, as well as the context in which they operate. The research aimed to identify the profile of people potentially interested in starting a business, by characterising them according to their labour market status and segmenting them by age, gender, residence and need for education/training to start a new business. We also set out to analyse the fields of activity in which prospective entrepreneurs wish to operate based on individually developed skills and knowledge and the financing needs of future businesses. The quantitative research targeted people in the Center Development Region interested in starting a business. The results obtained revealed the respondents' attitudes towards the entrepreneurial environment in Romania, the level of interest in starting their own business and the measures needed to encourage entrepreneurship in the analysed region. The findings may be useful for the stakeholders responsible for promoting and stimulating entrepreneurial activities in Romania. Public, local, regional and governmental authorities can use the information and results to initiate measures to boost entrepreneurship and create favourable conditions for small business start-ups and their further development. The conclusions of this study may also be of interest to providers of entrepreneurship education/training programmes as they highlight the training needs and interests of future entrepreneurs.

ABSTRACT. The Europeans' reason for emigrating are closely related to their motivation, and the factors that determine the emigration phenomenon are those of economic nature, but also social factors that determine the decision of emigration (family impact, gender and income differences). Knowing the direct reasons for the emigration of Eastern Europeans, but also the strategies used to leave their home country, these strategies can give us an overview of the phenomenon of emigration, and with all the variety that European society represents. In 2008, the economic crisis affected the labor market in most of the European countries and the unemployment rate increased, but the worst was felt in countries such as: Greece, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Italy, furthermore the reasons for emigration represent a negative impact on the economy through the lack of employment and a lower standard of living. The role of this empirical research is to analyze the impact of some macroeconomic factors that influence the economic imbalance and unemployment in countries where emigration emphasizes the country's economy, such as: unemployment, gross domestic product, minimum income of the economy and external incomes of selected European countries. We used panel data methodology (Generalized Method of Moments), in order to analyze the impact of chosen macroeconomic factors on unemployment on a sample of 24 countries from Europe during the period 2002 - 2020. Through the results obtained, we found that the emigration rate had a positive effect on unemployment in studied European countries, while minimum wage and remittances inflows had a negative impact during the analyzed period.

ABSTRACT. The status of environmental wellbeing is configured by the variety of its components that interact with each other, one contributing more or less to the status of the others. This endeavor chooses the option of directing its focus to the main and urgent environmental weak points. Accordingly, using descriptive analysis and panel data-specific methods (pooled, fixed, and random effects), applied for the period between 2006 and 2020 for the group of post-communist countries, the present study intends to (1) put face to face the economic, social, and environmental indicators specific to this group of countries; (2) emphasize their major environmental vulnerabilities; and (3) investigate the main social and economic factors still exerting a negative influence on the weak points identified in the previous step. In this way, the center of the debate is represented by environmental dimension with the aim of building our discussion around it and around its components registering critical values while linking the other socio-economic perspectives of wellbeing to them, for evidencing the ones appearing as critical in relation to environmental vulnerabilities. Our results showed that: (1) the components of Environmental Wellbeing registered a different evolution among the analysed economies across the 2006–2020 period; (2) there is still sufficient room for improvement in terms of environmental sustainability in this group of countries, especially in the case of Climate & Energy components; (3) these environmental components were closely linked to both components of economic and social dimensions, and (4) the determinants of energy use, energy savings, greenhouse gases, and renewable energy were found to be different in the post-communist economies. This study draws the attention on the fact that the patterns of development applied in this selected group of countries seem to strengthen the sustainable goals, but not sufficiently enough for exceeding the traditional growth-oriented model.

ABSTRACT. The pre-war model of economic development in Ukraine is resource-intensive and environmentally dangerous, unable to increase the welfare of the population, and does not correspond to the current world level of technological development. The national law system is still affected by authoritarian past, hardly moving to the adoption of the European standard. The consequences of the global pandemic and war have significantly affected the stability of the economy and society, ruined infrastructure, destroyed trade and logistic nets, stimulated great streams of refugees, and temporarily displaced persons inside and outside Ukraine. This can be overcome particularly by ensuring the sustainable development along with the rapid renovation and modernization following the UN SDG and the requirements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Inter alia it will help to return confidence to the state bodies and ensure the mutual trust of foreign investors. Today, the task of ensuring Ukraine's national security, and in particular its sustainable development and integration into the EU, is becoming important in the face of exacerbating current geo-economic challenges, such as war, unpredictable pandemics, the expected factors of the struggle for resources, energy dependence, the irreversible impact of climate change, loss of human capital, increasing social inequality, etc. Ukraine has joined the global program for the implementation of the SDG until 2030, so the methodology for assessing and analyzing national security and its components requires creation and justification. The paper aims to provide the strategic scheme encountering new geopolitical challenges to achieve the goals of sustainable development of Ukraine in the post-war period: economic, statistical, and effective solutions for the resolution of conflicts, related to the war losses recovering, and preventing post-war conflicts.

ABSTRACT. Utilizing Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, this paper investigates the impact of macoreconomic factors on the growth of Islamic bank financing in Indonesia. This study employ five macroeconomic indicators as explanatory variables, namely inflation, interest rate, industrial production index, exchange rate and money supply. The data used is time series data with monthly frequency from January 2008 to December 2019. The results of long run ARDL model find that the indutrial production index is the only macroeconomic factor that support the growth of Islamic bank financing in Indonesia. While the interest rate and exchange rate have negative influence on the the growth of Islamic bank financing in the long run. The results also reveal indication of short run influence from interest rate and money supply toward Islamic bank financing growth. The implication of this study is the macroeconomic factors that can encourage the growth of Islamic bank financing in Indonesia and supportive policy for promoting real sector as the key factors for policy makers to accelerate. The results of study can be tools for regulators in Indonesia to make stimulus regulation to create more stable macroeconomic environment that would be more condusive for Islamic banking to grow in Indonesia. Robustness test has also been carried out to prove that the results are valid.

ABSTRACT. Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) provide a plethora of positive direct effects on the host countries, such as additional resources and capabilities, added tax revenues, and GDP growth. Furthermore, they link the host economy to the global marketplace and improve the balance of payment. Apart from these direct effects, there are also many indirect consequences that must be taken into consideration, such as new management styles, new work culture, and more dynamic competitive practices. The sustained flow of FDI into developing nations is without a doubt an important stimulus for economic growth. In the present paper, the main objective is to present the inward FDI in China over the last 5 years, while highlighting the impact of the pandemic on the investment inflow. To achieve this goal, I have explained the importance of FDI inflows in the economic development of a country, I presented China's macroeconomic performance in recent years, and finally, I performed an analysis of the evolution of FDI inflows in China for the period 2017 – 2021. Regarding the methodology used, I have elaborated quantitative research, by collecting information and data from China`s national statistics, international statistics, and also from specialized literature. The hypothesis of the research is that despite being the country where the pandemic broke out, China managed to remain an attractive place for foreign investors. As a result of the research, the hypothesis from which we started was verified. In the last 5 years analyzed, China managed to rank 2nd in the world in terms of FDI inflows, and in the first year of the pandemic, thanks to the decisions adopted by the government, the country reduced the gap to the US leader by $2 billion.

ABSTRACT. The paper’s main objective is to provide a logical model of the financial market resilience under shocks (originated either in the invisible hand or in the visible hand). To this end, the basic concepts of market, financial market, and resilience (as structural property) are revisited in order to eliminate as much as possible the ambiguities which still persist in some approaches, including scientific ones. Based on these conceptual clarifications, next, the generic mechanism of resilience is built up which then is particularized to the system (or network, as the case could be) of the financial market. The resilience mechanism is examined also under the realistic supposition of holding the hysteresis in the very process of performing the resilience concerned. From a formal point of view, the paper provides a resilience function based on an implicit property of elasticity that is qualitatively analyzed and assessed. A set of criteria to classify the resilience property (or, perhaps, propensity!) of the financial market as system/network are identified based on which a general typology of the resilience concerned is proposed and briefly evaluated. To integrate into the same mechanism (process) the perturbation, resilience, and hysteresis in the financial market functioning, is used the concept of chreode, together with that of the two known associated phenomena: homeostasis, and homeorhesis, respectively. Finally, the paper discusses the issue of resilience from the perspective of its belonging under the structure of the financial system or just under the functionality of it. Based on these analyses, some proposals regarding the relationships between discretionarity and automaticity in the public policy aimed to regulate the financial market from the perspective of resilience are made.

ABSTRACT. Sustainability has become an almost mandatory 'stamp' of many articles in publications or of communications at conferences. This fashion (which also hit others such 'stamps' as, for example, climate change, globalization, European integration, etc.), that could involuntarily throw the term concerned into derisory, must be tempered by a conceptual analysis in order to frame its justified use from a scientific point of view. The paper aims at examining the logical nature of the concept of sustainability as it is attached either to systems or networks. More precisely, the scientific interest is to ‘choose’ between sustainability as being property and sustainability as being a propensity. To this end, primarily, both the property and propensity are, in turn, examined from logical and semantical perspectives, then a set of arguments are provided in favour of considering sustainability as a propensity (either of systems or networks), not a property. However, in the social (or, narrower, economic) field, since all systems/networks are artefacts, the propensity can be also induced deliberatively – we think that such deliberativeness could give the propensity the nature of a property so that in that field the distinction between property and propensity vanishes. Next, the paper considers the differences, as well as similitudes of the property of propensity between systems and networks, with their possible agglutinations: systems of networks, networks of systems, systems of systems, and networks of networks. Based on these distinctions, a sui generis typology of sustainability is proposed and roughly evaluated. Finally, the current international phenomena and events (pandemics, regional wars, nationalism, energy constraints, etc.) are shortly assessed from the sustainability point of view in order to extract the ‘fate’ of the sustainability paradigm for the tomorrow's world.

ABSTRACT. Recent developments have highlighted the significance of oil prices to the global economy. Inflation rates in Europe and the United States have risen to double digits as a direct result of recent spikes in oil prices brought on by factors such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Undoubtedly, the fluctuations in oil prices are also affected by the social environment and investor interest.

Our research presents a sentiment assessment based on the titles of oil-price-related articles published by Thomson Reuters, as well as an attention indicator based on the weekly Google Search Volume for data ranging from 2014 to the first semester of 2022. In the outset, we test both indicators for Granger causality to rule out the possibility of a spurious correlation. The next thing that is looked at is how the role that one's feelings play in determining the amount of attention that is received. The attention indicator and the sentiment indicator are both parts of a backpropagation network. Backpropagation networks are then used to analyse user feedback. The findings indicate that the incorporation of parameters that are not fundamental leads to an improvement in the accuracy of oil price forecasts.

The implications of our work are not limited to the cost of oil; rather, they influence all closely related market commodities as well as issuing companies. Considering that energy prices are affected by factors beyond supply and demand, this study demonstrates that the accuracy of forecasts can be significantly improved by giving a higher weight to non-fundamental factors during periods of high investor interest.

ABSTRACT. In this paper we will present the way the classical form of the relative strength index (RSI) functions on the Romanian cryptocurrency named EGLD. We will study the signals given to us by the values taken by RSI and the result obtained by us when we followed those signals. The period taken into consideration will cover the whole period since we can analyze the evolution of the price of EGLD taking into consideration the data published on the site Yahoo Finance so, the period that we will consider will be of almost three years. At the end of the paper we will present some concluding remarks about the classical forms of the technical analysis indicators and their actual capacity to give true or false signals regarding the totally new category of cryptocurrencies. The main scope of our paper is to verify if one of the most well known and used old technical analysis indicator functions now as it should and could be used on a very young category of finance: the cryptocurrencies exemplified with the Romanian EGLD. In our research, we will analyze, at the end of it, whether higher yields can be obtained by using the RSI compared to those which result from applying the buy and hold strategy. In other studies that we will publish we will verify if other forms of the relative strength index resulted from it's classical form adapted to all the information the market currently offers function better. The actual study empirically tests the RSI and the buy and hold strategy on the same set of data.

ABSTRACT. The euro, the single currency of the European Union was introduced in 1999, initially in 11 Member States that qualified by 1997 in terms of the so called Maastricht Convergence Criteria. On January 1, 2023, Croatia will join the euro area as the 20th member.

Since 1957 the European Treaty has made it clear, originally with its article 109 EEC, that far reaching currency cooperation was necessary in the common market in order to call such a market a common market and be a fair market. That is why after the euro was introduced Member States that did not meet the Maastricht Convergence Criteria were called “Member States with a Derogation”, Member States that were only temporarily excused from a common rule, namely having the single currency in every EU Member State.

Romania became an EU Member State together with Bulgaria on 1 January 2007. So this paper asks where Romania is in this process of euro adoption fifteen years from then? And may be more pertinent questions to ask are: Does it harm the Romanian and European economy that Romania is not in the euro area? Is it better for Romania to opt for staying outside the euro area like countries like Denmark and Sweden, and the United Kingdom in the past? Which forces are at work to inhibit euro adoption in Romania? What has to be done to make Romania adopt the euro as soon as possible?

The paper concludes that the fact that Romania did not adopt the euro until now is due to lacking political will and misunderstanding of the economic situation that Romania is in being part of the internal market but not of the euro area. Structural Romanian economic problems can be addressed and euro adoption be realized in due course when banking law is made euro compatible and entry into ERM II realized as soon as possible.

ABSTRACT. The study examines the movements of the BET Index from Bucharest Stock Exchange between May 2012 and August 2022, a period which captures the major Covid-19 Pandemic Crisis, in order to see how the volatility in the Romanian Stock Market was influenced by this event. The data used in this research is secondary, obtained from Investing.com and the period was divided into two subperiods, one beginning with May 2012 and ending in February 2020 ( before the event was actually declared as a pandemic by the W.H.O) and the other beginning with March, 2020 and ending in August 2022, in order to include the date of March, 11th 2020 when the W.H.O assessed that the World was dealing with a pandemic. The second subperiod is also very interesting to investigate because it encompasses actions made by the Romanian Government and by the Romanian National Bank in order to help the struggling economy and also subsequent actions taken to fight the inflationary effects of the former decisions. The study tries to investigate how different specifications of univariate GARCH models can effectively forecast the volatility of the BET Index, while comparing both symmetric and asymmetric GARCH models applied on daily time-series data. The preliminary results show that all the models performed well in capturing the swings of the realized volatility, asymmetric EGARCH and TGARCH models providing better fit for the magnitude of the movements for the data sample used, while the symmetric GARCH (1,1) model provide a slightly worse fit, illustrating an increased volatility provoked by negative shocks compared to the positive shocks.

ABSTRACT. Our study aims to empirically examine the link between the development of the banking sector and economic growth in the member countries of the European Union. In addition, we aim to investigate whether the impact of banking sector development on economic growth is different in euro area countries compared to non-euro area EU countries.

The analysis covers the period 2000-2020 and is based on data obtained, mainly, from the World Bank's World Development Indicators database. Economic growth is measured in our work by GDP per capita growth rates. The key variables of interest are represented by two indicators that measure the development of the banking sector, namely the share in GDP of domestic credit granted to the private sector by banks and the share of banking assets in GDP.

Using the panel data technique, our empirical results would indicate a strong and statistically significant link between the development of the banking sector and economic growth, both at the level of the EU countries and at the level of the other two groups of countries. However, the two indicators that measure the development of the banking sector give some different results in the case of EU countries, which are not members of the euro area.

In general, our findings are in line with economic theory, but also with the results of empirical studies relevant to our topic, which emphasize the crucial importance of developing a sound and healthy banking sector in order to accelerate economic growth.

ABSTRACT. An integrated banking risk management system presupposes the existence and functionality of policies, procedures and tools designed to identify, assess and eliminate/assume the risk to wich the banking institution is exposed. There is a set of specific operations and procedures that generate banking risk. In addition, banking companies have to deal with risks that are not specific to them. With the national and international expansion of electronic credit system, financial markets have become much more fragile, the degree of uncertainty has increased, adding to all this the multiplication of risks specific to the financial-banking system due to the pandemic crisis. Therefore, the most common cause of losses and insolvency of credit institutions is due to the difficulty of dealing with events that may occur but have not been foreseen, as is the case with the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper we conducted a research targeting banking companies in the current crisis circumstances, analyzing the issue of risk management in credit institutions. This approach is the basic pillar of this paper, which, in addition to the traditional aspects of banking management, also considers how the challenges and critical issues during crises become a test of competence for managers in order to overcome less predictable situations. The scientific approach undertaken focuses on the liquidity risk in credit institutions derived from studying the activity of the UNIREA Cooperative Bank. This paper concludes that, in the context of the global financial crisis and the pandemic due to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, there have been major changes in the operating environment of the credit institutions and indicates a reassessment of the techniques and methods applied in banking management.

ABSTRACT. In an ideal world, analysts and individuals, in general, would always have access to financial reports based on sound financial reporting standards. In practice, however, the quality of financial reports can vary considerably. High quality financial reporting provides information that is useful in assessing a firm's performance and prospects. On the other hand, low-quality financial reporting contains inaccurate, incomplete or even misleading information. The shortcomings encountered in the quality of financial reporting have led to major scandals that have resulted not only in investor losses but also in a loss of confidence in the financial system overall. At the other end of the spectrum, high-quality reporting provides decision-useful information that is relevant and represents the economic reality of companies’ activities during the reporting period as well as their financial position at the end of the financial year. The quality of financial reporting can be seen as a continuum, ranging from the highest (containing complete, accurate and unbiased information) to the lowest (containing biased, incomplete or even fabricated information). The mechanisms that discipline the quality of financial reporting include the free market or incentives offered to companies to minimise audit costs. Nevertheless, efforts in this direction (that support the quality of financial reporting) are to be seen (also) at institutional level, through the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Consequently, this paper aims to investigate the understanding of the quality of financial reporting by providing a clear imagine of how it got to where it stands today.

ABSTRACT. The paper is aimed to review and analyse the relevance and viability of early warning signals (“EWS”) to predict insolvency during times characterised by high economic volatility such as the one generated by the pandemic, when corporates have had to face signaficant challenges, maybe as never before - production disruption, lockdown, increasing costs - commodities and financial expenses, tremendous need for digitalization and technological upgrades as mandatory conditions to survive on the medium to long run. EWS such as indebtedness degree, equity ratio, payment incidents and debt service cover, which have been traditionally used by the financial institutions in their credit portfolio risk assessments, shall be analysed since the beginning of Covid-19 challenge. The empirical analysis shall be based on the financial data of the Romanian corporate sector made available by the National Bank of Romania and Ministry of Finance. The complexity of the investigation is being augmented by the support schemes implemented at structural level by the public authorities, through financing programs and payment moratoria, making debt repayment profile for some Romanian corporates look better in spite of their weaker economic substance. The qualitative research is based on the analysis of the evolution of the above mentioned EWS in correlation with the number of insolvencies registered, while taking into account the time lag factor between the EWS and actual insolvency. The financial data shall be examined over a period of 5 years covering Covid -19 pandemic and three years before.

ABSTRACT. Taxation is an important component of the business strategy and every person and company would like to pay lower taxes and still be compliant with the fiscal legislation. This paper investigates the outsourcing of tax services in case of natural persons, SMEs and large companies. We employed a qualitative approach using the Core competencies theory as theoretical framework, business environment from Romania as context and semi-structured interviews as research method. The interviews involved accounting firms and clients. The results indicated that in case of tax services outsourcing, the external tax advisors support the clients to make the tax planning, help them to improve their compliance and reduce the tax risks. Natural persons often outsource the tax related tasks since they do not have time or proper training and expertise to prepare the tax returns. Outsourcing of tax services like outsourcing of accounting services is very common in small and smaller medium-sized enterprises for cost reduction reasons and their main interest is to comply with the fiscal law and lessen their tax burden. In larger medium-sized enterprises and large corporations the volume, variety and complexity of transactions are very high and because of that so are the tax risks. In order to mitigate the tax risks and avoid the fines and penalties related to late or non-declaration or statements with errors, some of these companies resort also to external tax services such as verification or preparing of tax returns, tax reviews, ongoing support on fiscal issues, assistance and representation during fiscal inspections if necessary. International companies regardless of their size are more open to collaborate with external tax advisors. Due to recent change, taxpayers will have a new declarative obligation that consists in preparation and submission of a complex statement called SAF-T and that measure is expected to increase the compliance costs for companies. Showing, the importance and the role of external tax advisors for persons and companies running businesses in Romania represents the main contribution of our study.

ABSTRACT. Quality education has always been a topic of high interest among researchers, but concept’s definitions seem to be difficultly identified within the recent international literature. Current quality education appears to be rather contextualized in guidelines or general framework used by educational local, regional or national authorities when evaluating. As quality education is the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) stated by United Nations in 2015, the present paper is an attempt of defining quality education within the current global context using a bibliometric analysis. The present research paper aims to highlight priority perspectives in defining the quality education through a bibliometric analysis. Simultaneously, the paper intends to reveal the connection between education, skills and employability. Therefore, the bibliometric analysis was performed with the application VOSviewer 1.6.18 and Web of Science Clarivate was chosen because it is a database that includes papers from different research areas belonging to famous international publications. Consequently, 477 out of 8541 papers from Web of Science Clarivate that encountered the relevant criteria were analyzed. The analysis was conducted considering the keywords co-occurrences related to `quality education`, `quality of education` and `quality in education` from the recent international literature, resulting priority perspectives in the domain. Comparing the priority perspectives resulted from the analysis to the educational quality standards, relevant content gaps were identified. Further studies should reveal new educational quality standards based on these analysis’ outcomes. Present and future research findings are supposed to draw directions for a new educational system based on a real connection between education, skills and employability.

ABSTRACT. Medical system is one of the public sector directly affected by corruption, with a negative impact on society. Mostly, corruption affects people’s confidence in public institutions, undermines the sense of justice, and the quality of medical act or public administration are generally questioned. The presence of Covid-19 pandemic along with economic difficulties that countries were facing at the end of 2019, outlined the elements needed to set up a crisis situation. The most affected and hard-to-try public systems was the healthcare sector, and it was necessary to identify solutions that would prove useful in the face of the aggressive spread of the virus and the exponential increase in cases of disease. In this way, was drawn an opportunity for corruption to flourish in healthcare sectors around the world, the main cause being the mismanagement of financial resources allocated to the fight against pandemic. Procurement of goods and services for a proper treatment against disease, has generated favorable conditions for the embezzlement of healthcare funds, by instant appearance of companies specialized in sales segment, and by involving nepotism and favoritism in the procedures for awarding public contracts. Considering the aspects mentioned above, specific methods must be outlined to reach an improvement in healthcare system management, such as: drawing a cause-effect model to determine the factors of corruption, elaborating multi-level approach that reveals corruption's appearance and evolution, developing proposals to improve the legislative aspects etc. Like so, the aim is to achieve objectives like building, developing and protecting an impartial healthcare system, strengthening the integrity of medical act through education, prevention and responsibility, and developing rigorous mechanisms of administrative verification. Through the elements, goals and objectives described above, patterns must be highlighted to improve knowledge in this field to achieve solid benchmarks in the prevention and fight against corruption.

ABSTRACT. The medical system of the EU Member States presents an ongoing need for public governance oriented to more efficient public strategies that consider the perspective of integrating new societal challenges, fragile economic recovery and sustaining the financing of the health systems, especially under the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This research explores the recent relationship between public governance dimensions, divided into democratic and technical governance, and health expenditures allocation, under the theory of welfare economics and concerning the economic performance of EU countries. The research approaches both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The qualitative research methodology refers to bibliometric analysis for an in-depth review of the existing literature, along with data mapping process to visually evidence the relevant descriptors, observe the significant differentiation in the level of each variable, and underline the dissimilarities between the EU countries. The quantitative research methodology is based on two different advanced empirical analyses, namely principal component analysis (PCA) and regression analysis, performed over the period 2007-2020. Two indices were created from the world governance indicators through PCA: technical governance, gathering the effect of governance efficiency, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption, and democratic governance, gathering the voice and accountability and political stability effects. The main results reveal that both governance indices have a significant direct influence on health expenditures per capita, and considering GDP growth as a control variable, this indicator negatively influences health expenditures. Accordingly, results emphasise a need to redesign the public governance of health systems in terms of health spending allocations and increase investments in healthcare to support economic growth in the long run. To enhance new opportunities for financing health systems, specific policies and tailored strategies can be drawn by all the governments across the EU, with particular spillover effects on the health expenditure allocation.

ABSTRACT. The missions of universities had to expand under the pressure of many challenges: the knowledge economy, globalization, different profound crises - financial, environmental or social. Complementary to the first two traditional missions of universities - learning and teaching, and research -, a third mission was introduced in order to identify the contribution of universities to economic and social development, more broadly defined as the interactions between universities and society at large. A new concept evolved in time to acknowledge the third mission, the entrepreneurial university. The transition from research university to entrepreneurial university has its origins in USA (MIT and Stanford University) and still has more relevance and resonance in US as compared to Europe. The approach (a bottom-up as compared to top-down) and the type of financing that predominates (private as compare to public) makes the entrepreneurial university more effective in US as compared to Europe. This paper has two research objectives: 1) to present the evolving concept of entrepreneurial university and 2) to identify the path and drivers for transforming a university in a more entrepreneurial one.

ABSTRACT. Through this paper, I have tried to find out what changes have occurred during the last two years, due to the effects of the pandemic and online education. The COVID-19 pandemic has generated various changes regarding the education system and the assumption of reality in a different way by all involved parties and the concept of traditional education has changed radically. Globally, the adoption of digital transformations remains a challenge as well as an opportunity. The use of information technology in school is part of the evolution of learning suggesting a natural solution to the modern challenges addressed to traditional learning. Technology has gained importance in all fields as well as in the educational sector, thus traditional courses turning into online courses. In this study, taking into consideration the changes that occurred, we will analyze the information collected regarding the experiences, solutions, methods and unconventional strategies applied, in order to understand the online education. Analyzing the relevant literature of our interest field, we notice that certain studies found that both teachers and students agreed that online education was useful and at the same time, other studies show that it was less effective than traditional learning and teaching, such as face to face. The purpose of this research is to get as much real information as possible about how the classes went and how well the teachers managed to pass on the information to the students. Based on the previously mentioned, we consider that it is necessary and useful to understand teachers' perceptions regarding online education.

ABSTRACT. Summary. The years 2020 and 2021 will be remembered for the COVID-19 pandemic. The extraordinary situation in which the whole world found itself brought great challenges for all industries and sectors, including for the physical education and sports system in Romania. The article presents the results of a study of the activity of students from "ARTIFEX" University in Bucharest in the discipline "Physical Education and Sport - taught online". In addition, up-to-date information on the most popular student sports in the 2020/2022 academic year is displayed. The results show that online learning in the subject "Physical Education and Sport" is relatively successful and the role of the teacher to organize and motivate students cannot be fulfilled in an electronic environment. There are differences in communication between EFS classes taught physically and those held online, as well as in the behavior of the sports pedagogue who carries out activities in the gym and that of the teacher who teaches in front of the computer. Lack of movement and social contacts are one of the main problems of isolation and working from home. The status of physical capacity of students is a very accurate and objective indicator, through which can be revealed the influence and efficiency of the educational process. The analysis of the results shows that the Physical Education activities have positive impact and help to improve the physical capacity of students. According to the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), a person needs at least 75 minutes of intense physical activity per week to be healthy. The offer of the Department of Physical Education and Sport of the "ARTIFEX" University in Bucharest almost completely overlaps with the students' preferences.

ABSTRACT. Although health spending has increased in Romania, the budget allocation for health, compared to the gross domestic product, is among the lowest in Europe, specifically, in 2019, lower on average by 4.69% compared to the European average and by 6.08% compared to Germany, the country with the highest budget allocation for health. Every year, Romania's mortality rate is among the highest in the European Union, each time above the EU average and in last place in terms of treatable causes of mortality, which does show that the national health system fails to provide the necessary services, among the main causes being underfunding and inefficient use of allocated financial resources. The effects of the underfunding of the health system in Romania are highlighted in the statistics of the European Union level, the life expectancy at birth as well as the unsatisfied needs regarding the medical services ranked far worse than the European average. As part of this paper, a qualitative and quantitative research has been done which highlights the existence of direct relationships between the underfunding of the Romanian health system and the ability to provide citizens with adequate medical services. A comparative analysis of the level of funding in EU countries is conducted in regards to the best performing health systems, which have a direct impact on the health of the population and the situation in Romania.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between corporate governance and intellectual capital considering Romanian companies from all industries. It has been found that intellectual capital and good corporate governance practices can contribute to the wealth creation of firms. Strategic planning, organization, transparency, and accountability are the cornerstones of a good corporate governance system. These elements improve the quality of the internal control and risk management processes and increase investors’ and other stakeholders' trust. The importance of intellectual capital has been acknowledged by companies as a vital component of their competitive advantage. This study aims to analyze the effects of corporate governance on the intellectual capital of companies. The sample is composed of 64 companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange in the time span 2016-2021. The data were collected from companies' annual reports and from Thomson Reuters database. In this way, we investigated the relationship between corporate governance, measured as the compliance with the Bucharest Stock Exchange Code of Corporate Governance, and intellectual capital, measured by two different methods: Economic Value Added (EVA) and Value Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC). The results showed that there is a relationship between intellectual capital and corporate governance. The outcomes of the present study can be used by policymakers in order to increase the efficiency of companies and to determine the need to invest in human capital.

ABSTRACT. The article with the theme The Learning Economy: The profile of the leader, highlights the theoretical framework of the new concept of the learning economy starting from the axiom of knowledge as the main factor of production in the digital economy. Highlighting the two aspects of knowledge: the ability to process information in order to make individual decisions (at the microeconomic level) or as an asset - input (skills)/output (innovation in production processes), the analysis of specialized literature focuses on identifying the correlation that exists between the typology of knowledge and the characteristics of the learning economy. In a dynamic, digitized and global economy, leadership is the main vector for transmitting knowledge and implementing the attributes of The Learning Economy, a fact highlighted by the review of the relevant literature in the field. Starting from this hypothesis, in the research part a study was carried out to identify the character and behavioral traits of the effective leader and to outline the profile of the leader of excellence at the level of the Romanian Western Region. Two questionnaires were applied in observation units (67 organizations with more than 50 employees from the four counties of the region in 7 branches of activity) and survey units (the number of respondents being 931 people, structured according to gender criteria, age, education and position in the company hierarchy). The profile of the effective leader is defined with the help of 37 questions regarding character traits and 38 questions regarding his behavioral traits. As for the behavioral and character profile of the leader of excellence, it is defined by: 10 characteristics/behaviors that could designate the leader of excellence and 10 characteristics/behaviors that should not be found in the profile of the leader of excellence. The preliminary results highlight the main characteristics of the effective leader profile and that of excellence, attributes that are largely found in the most recent reports of the Word Economic Forum and in the theoretical framework of the article.

ABSTRACT. In the last decade, the Internet has gained considerable momentum in relation to technological development, the Internet of Things (IoT) has paved the way for a new innovative branch full of opoturnities both from manufacturers in the R&D area but also from the end consumer who must adapt to new innovations. Like any new technology at the beginning of the road, IoT, is very vulnerable in relation to cyberattacks, manufacturers having big problems due to hacks who want to steal the new technology and the end consumer becomes very vulnerable during attacks. In response to security issues, IoT manufacturers have chosen to implement Blockchain technology alongside IoT, BIoT, is becoming a new technological branch designed to help develop security over R&D products. In this paper, I want to show the importance of implementing Blockchain technology in the field of IoT. The economic impact it has both in reducing security costs but also in the high level of Security it offers to the final consumer. This article comes as a building block in this direction of research, as it contains (i) an analysis of existing relationship between Blockchain and the Internet of Things methods and approaches, together with their impact from a data protection perspective and (ii) an analysis of literature. Consequently, this article assists in bridging the gap between security and implementation of Blockchain with IoT, as it provides recommendations for R&D companies that implement IoT and can reduce costs by implementing Blockchain but also for the end consumer who is sure that ioT products offer him real security.

ABSTRACT. Last decades proved once more that one important effect of any crisis is a re-evaluation of ideas, theories and policies, causing even changes in the mainstream paradigms. The complexity of the Covid-19 impact on economic, social, political environment increased the demand for short-term reaction, including in the economic research where studies about the health systems and their resilience to crisis are important for both understanding the phenomenon and preparing for the future. The paper analyses the relationship between the long-term behavior of the EU countries related to health expenditures and Global Health Security Index to assess their performance during the Covid-19 crisis. Using the data from World Health Organization for 2000-2019, a K-Means cluster analysis was conducted, and EU countries were classified in three groups based on Current Health Expenditure as percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Current Health Expenditure per Capita in USD. One-way ANOVA analysis in SPSS was performed to analyze the relevance for the health systems performance, measured based on GHS Index values and rankings. The conclusion is that countries with both high per capita health spending and high percentage of spending allocated to health compared to their GDP per capita are more prepared to deal with crisis and had a better reaction to Covid-19 crisis. This conclusion could be an incentive at national and EU level to spend more money on health in order to provide a higher performance of the health systems.

ABSTRACT. Even though the COVID-19 virus has negatively impacted travel and tourism throughout the world, the pandemic presents a chance to rebuild the industry with a sustainability-focused vision. The core of a vast economic ecosystem that significantly boosts income and job creation across all EU member states is the tourism industry. Most domestic and international travel has been halted because of the epidemic, which has significantly reduced income and caused liquidity issues for all tourist businesses. However, the figures seem decent. Is the tourist industry growing more quickly than we anticipated? Until the pandemic is declared finished, the days of planning holidays based on where we want to go or what tourist sites we want to visit are over. Instead, the field industry, as well as visitors, will be considerably more concerned with meeting certain personal demands. As a result, post-Covid tourism will be more concerned with the individual than with locations. People are expected to make far more deliberate decisions when faced with the urge to travel as well as the hurdles to satisfying that goal. Tourists will be less ready to compromise on their future vacations in the post-Covid age. They will have higher expectations of the services provided by the hotel business. And, to meet expectations, the hotel sector will need to focus its experiences, facilities, and services centered on wellness, health, and overall well-being. The crisis has provided a chance to use new technology, adopt green recovery measures, and transition to policies and business practices that better balance tourism's environmental, social, and economic implications. Policymakers should use the opportunity to relaunch the tourist industry on a more solid, equitable, and sustainable foundation. The crisis, and the recovery strategies that are being implemented, represent a once-in-a-lifetime chance to transition to more sustainable and resilient tourist development models.

ABSTRACT. Via Transilvanica is the road that unites, it is a road that breaks the barriers between generations and cultures. Via Transilvanica is a fascinating journey with stories of diversity, of the landscapes that reveal themselves as you pass from one stage of the journey to another, and which are as different as the people who, whether they walk this route or live -along it. The territory traversed by the 1400 km long Via Transilvanica is divided into seven historical and cultural regions: Bucovina, Ținutul de Sus, Terra Siculorum, Terra Saxonum, Terra Dacica, Terra Banatica and Terra Romana. In Mureș County, on the border with Brașov and Sibiu counties, Via Transilvanica runs through an area where a short food chain operates, "Bucate din vecinătate". Founded in Saschiz by the "Women's Neighborhood", the short food chain promotes established local products but also culinary innovations, including through gastronomic events that have long crossed the borders of the area, like the "Rhubarb Festival". In the north of Sibiu County, the cooperative "Bucate din Proximitate" has as its general objective the facilitation of cooperation between local producers of the Mediașului Plateau for the sale of local products through short food chains. The Food Hub also operates in Sibiu County, which markets the products of local producers through a short food chain. The fact that the products are accompanied by the manufacturer's contact details is a guarantee of quality and the certainty of the authenticity of traditional local products. Short food chains operated through online orders during the pandemic. The quality of the products and the seriousness of those who ensured the delivery led customers to continue the demand even in the post-pandemic period. The Terra Saxona route on Via Transilvanica is an opportunity for local producers to promote local traditional values and capitalize on the multi-ethnic gastronomic endowment.

ABSTRACT. Despite the existing economic and geopolitical challenges, the tourism industry continues to recover, currently on an upward slope and closer to pre-pandemic levels. Geographically the war did not extend beyond the borders of Ukraine. Looking ahead, the curtailment of travel from Russia and Ukraine will hinder the overall recovery of tourism, at least on the European continent. Starting from the results recorded before the pandemic, as well as starting from the second half of 2021, a series of predictions can be made regarding the moment when international tourism will return to pre-pandemic figures and even surpass them. After 2020, 2021 is officially the second worst year in tourism history. The UNWTO confirmed that although tourism grew by 4% in 2021 compared to the previous year, the number of international tourist arrivals is still well below the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, which ended with a record 1.5 billion travel The relaxation of travel restrictions as a result of increased coordination and cross-border protocols, along with increased vaccination rates, have contributed to growing tourism demand. Global Data predicts that in 2022 international departures will reach 68% of pre-Covid levels (1.020 billion tourists) and that we will have to wait until 2025 to talk about a full recovery, although it will not be the same in all regions and not it will depend not only on the sanitary situation but also on the economic and political one. WTTC's recent forecasts for 2022 invite optimism. GlobalData analysts estimate that 82% of international travel volume from 2019 will be recovered by 2023 (around 1.23 billion travelers); 97% (1.455 billion) in 2024 and in 2025 there will even be an excess of pre-pandemic levels (1.515 billion tourists).

ABSTRACT. The implementation of sustainable farming practice of coffee plantation through Indonesia Geographical Indication of Origins (GIs) has been already widely acknowledged in the global coffee market. The demand for GIs for coffee has been growing rapidly in the last two decades. The emerging coffee chain and culture are amongst the evidence where young consumers most likely dominate the GIs coffee. Located on the archipelagos and in the intersection of ring of fire, Indonesia serves nearly 100 Arabica of genetic varieties. Importantly, coffee is as one of the most important agriculture commodities in Indonesia that implement sustainable practice contributes for economic sources, job creation and poverty alleviation for smallholder farmers. As the Covid-19 pandemic strikes economy are disrupted, including Indonesia coffee plantation. Thus, the issue for implementing sustainable practice for farmer become problematic. However, thanks to e-commerce innovation, most coffee consumers learned their alternative way to enjoy their coffee. As result, social restriction during Covid pandemic remains not change consumer preferences on a unique taste of GIs coffee. The study, therefore, aims to evaluate the implementation of Indonesia GIs scheme before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. A propensity score matching was applied to evaluate the scheme implementation, using primary data collected from 500 smallholder GIs coffee farmers. This study conducted dual method of surveys; face to face interview in 2019 for filling ‘before Covid-19’ and phone interview in 2022 for filling ‘during Covid-19’. To summarize the analyses on the economic performance of smallholder farmers, we applied composite index method. Our study demonstrated before and during Covid-19 pandemic, the implementation of sustainable farming practice through GIs scheme indicates weak economic impacts, leaving spaces for further development, particularly within input, activities, and output within pre- and post-harvest periods, as well as the scheme’s institutional setting. In regard of lack studies to evaluate the implementation of sustainable farming practice of GIs scheme regarding Covid-19 pandemic, this study demonstrated information about the impact of Covid-19 on farmer’s economic performance. In addition, this study revealed strategies for GIs coffee farmer and also can be implemented for other GIs actor dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and other global uncertain shock

ABSTRACT. Although it feels like yesterday, the Covid-19 pandemic has begun almost 4 years ago. Apart from the devastating effect it had on people’s lives, it has also left its marks on each and every area of the world. So, no matter where you lived, you probably were touched by the pandemic, one way or another. According to the National Institute of Statistics as of July, 1st 2021 43.68% of Romania’s population lived in the rural area. This means almost half of Romania’s population and most of the times the rural environment is ignored or overlooked. The purpose of this paper is to expound and to underline the changes that the economic behaviour and the sustainable economic development have gone through in the last few years, especially in the Romanian rural environment. Another goal of this paper is to emphasize the role that agriculture and tourism play in the sustainable economic development in the rural area. A side-by-side comparison between the situation before the pandemic and after the pandemic has passed represents another objective. Through this paper I also aim to find out the lacks, the wants and the needs of the Romanian rural entrepreneur and how they changed in the last years. To achieve the objectives that were mentioned above the methodology includes the study of secondary data, such as specialty articles and papers. It also includes empirical research, to be exact, quantitative research – a survey that was applied to the people who were directly affected by the pandemic, people who live, work, and have businesses in the Romanian rural environment. The pandemic has been an opportunity for the whole world to improve, rethink and adapt to conditions that were unnatural to us, let’s see if we managed to change something for the better in the Romanian rural environment.

ABSTRACT. In many cases, entrepreneurs have the power and ability to identify problems and find solutions to solve them. Also, entrepreneurs "are obliged" by definition to be able to identify opportunities, at local, national and even international level. In recent years, the business environment has been influenced by many changes. In particular, the 2019-2022 period was unique from many points of view for entrepreneurs. The last 3 years have been marked by several crises: sanitary, political, informational, energetic, military...etc. All these crisis situations had a major impact on the economy, globally, but also nationally or locally. The business people were forced to adapt instantly to the new conditions and to the new social and economic reality. Some succeeded and others unfortunately gave up. The main purpose of this research work is to highlight the solutions and opportunities of entrepreneurs, in this difficult period. To obtain the results, I interviewed entrepreneurs from different fields and locations, some who had businesses before 2020 and others who opened a new business after 2020. We can also mention: the analysis of documents, official surveys and published studies. From this perspective, the entrepreneurs who adapted can be divided into two categories: the first category is represented by the entrepreneurs who resisted the problems and kept the business "alive". The second category is represented by entrepreneurs who resisted but also managed to find solutions for business development. In addition, a third category can be mentioned: that of new entrepreneurs, who have identified opportunities, especially in this period full of uncertainty, fear and unpredictability.

ABSTRACT. The cornerstone of this paper is the importance of understanding and modeling volatility. These represent key issues in financial markets due to the several implications in risk management process, portfolio management, hedging and pricing operations or economic policy. The main aim of the paper is to examine if the energy market realized volatility exhibits a symmetric or an asymmetric behaviour, for certain commodities over the period May 2012 – August 2022. We considered this time frame for data collection because it is ensuing after the extensively researched period of the financial crises that started in 2007. The commodities choosen for examination in this paper are crude oil, gas and electricity. These are fundamental for the energy market and for the capital market as a whole. We took into consideration the STOXX Europe 600 index representing large, mid and small capitalization companies accros 17 countries from the European Union. Subsidiary we wan’t to examine if there are similarities in term of realized volatility between energy markets and equity markets.. For energy markets the results are consistent with the leverage hypothesis of the asymmetric volatility, i.e. negative and positive returns with the same magnitude have different impact on volatility. Furthermore the volatility is more sensitive to its lagged values in the market place than it is to new information. In additinon, for the entire period volatility is asymetric for both energy and equity markets, but there are different sub-periods with different results. These results reinforce the diversification principle that has to be considered in portfolio and risk management process.

ABSTRACT. In the current context, which determines a rather cautious consumption behavior for tourism products/services in Romania and around the world, tourists' intentions to revisit some destinations take on a special significance for tourism organizations. Tourist destinations proposed to consumers increasingly include natural and cultural heritage attractions, places that offer many opportunities, more safety for visitors in post-pandemic conditions, activities that take place in the open air, with more space for them. An effective marketing communication of tourism organizations will increase the attractiveness of tourist destinations, of natural heritage, promoting the benefits of this type of tourist product, will generate a favorable image in the minds of consumers as well as intentions to revisit in the future. Tourists seek to identify, choose and finally make a decision to visit a destination that provides as much of what they want from a travel, where they have something to see, attractive tourist experiences both in terms of the beauty of the landscapes, natural attractions. The purpose of the study is to identify influences on the intentions to revisit tourist destinations. Based on an exploratory research, in a marketing approach, the study brings to attention the need to know, understand and fructify the attitudes and behaviors of consumers of tourism services, their intentions and motivations to revisit tourist destinations. Given that tourists have access to information and benefit from more and more information about natural heritage sites, they will be motivated to plan periods of time and resources to revisit the tourist destination for relaxation, recreation. Intentions to revisit some tourist destinations are manifested as a result of consumer satisfaction, even in the conditions of new possible travels to other attractive tourist areas.

ABSTRACT. One of the most important factors that influences the success of a company is its corporate governance, the rules adopted and designed to provide the resilience structure for the whole business, to regulate the decision-making process, to support the relationships between the management of the companies and their shareholders and to solve any conflicts that may arise between these categories, protecting, on the one hand, the shareholders’ rights, and, on the other hand, ensuring the independence the management needs, in order to increase the performance and value of the company. There is no universal model of corporate governance. Corporate governance models and practices are different from one country to another, influenced by several factors, such as: the legislation, the history and culture of each country. Therefore, some companies consider that they achieve their goal as long as the company’s profitability and owners’ wealth increase, while others believe that the rights of all their stakeholders (employees, government agencies, customers, creditors) must be protected. In this paper, I have synthetized three main corporate governance models: the European model – oriented towards protection of all stakeholders, with their representatives in the supervisory boards and with a high ownership concentration; the Anglo-Saxon model – concerned about the protection of shareholders, including minority ones, with a very dispersed ownership; and the Japanese model – strongly influenced by culture and history, with an important role of the banks as the major capital providers.

ABSTRACT. The corporate governance of public enterprises consists of the set of rules that govern the administration and control system within these enterprises. Public enterprises represent an important segment of the national economy, and their efficiency definitely depends on the performance of their management and on the correct implementation of the corporate governance principles. The importance of such a theme in the context of the public sector is given by the fact that the public enterprises are important actors of the Romanian economy and for a good activity they influence the stability of the national economy. In the same time, the efficient functioning of the public institutions have a positive impact on the contribution of them to the economy and to obtaining a balancing solution of the public budgets. Starting from this premise, through this paper I propose to offer a vision over the need and benefits of applying the corporate governance principles and of the way that these good governance mechanisms influence the development and implementation of various strategies (financial, managerial, etc.) at the level of these enterprises. This study has to do with particular aspects of the corporative governance in the public sector/sphere. This means a general framework necessary for establishing the relevant objectives for the public sector, measuring the performance of the public institutions or a classification of the performance standards. From the analysis of different national and international codes of corporative governance I have identified a set of basic pillars of the corporative governance which will be analyzed in this study: transparency, responsibility, control, observing performance, proportional payment for managers and an adequate leading structure.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays, the business environment in which companies perform is becoming more dynamic and ever-changing, demanding continuous adjustment of strategies and operations to deal with these shifting conditions. Corporate governance and competitiveness represent particular and important aspects of the economic system, illustrating, on the one hand, the way companies are organized and controlled, and, on the other hand, the ways companies try to improve their competitive spirit and their strategies in order to reach the highest (competitive) advantage and benefits. Our study presents both theoretical and empirical results. In the first part, it offers a theoretical overview of the concepts of corporate governance and international competitiveness, and in the second part, it analyzes the characteristics of the Romanian national competitiveness according to survey data offered by IMD (Institute for Management Development), and takes a brief look of the Romanian corporate governance legislation (especially the Bucharest Stock Exchange Corporate Governance Code), focusing on the governance practices and structures adopted by the Romanian companies (companies that are part of the BET Plus Index of the Bucharest Stock Exchange), attempting to identify the interrelation between corporate governance mechanisms and Romanian competitiveness. Competitiveness and corporate governance are two concepts that are starting to gain importance in an emerging country like Romania, and the recent economic reality shows that the Romanian companies have realized that they play a key role in the national competitiveness and that they should permanently improve their corporate governance practices. The paper will contribute to the development of the management system and business prospects.

ABSTRACT. The increased expenses, the dependence on IT for business operations and the growing legislation or professional requirements regarding transactions with related parties impose the need for increased attention to this area. The paper's objective is to examine the nature of transactions with related parties, how they are reflected in the context of a financial audit, as well as the challenges and the solution to problems related to risk management, as well as the detection of factors that can affect the financial audit quality. In order to highlight the mentioned aspects, we conducted a study on the KAMs reported by auditors from the Related Parties category. These are analyzed by the type of auditors, their opinion, the year, the country, and the fields of activity. The data was collected from the Audit Analytics database, the filtering criteria being the search by category KAM: Related parties, period 2013-2021. The selection resulted in 111 companies reporting 248 KAMs related to related party transactions, most of which were reported in 2017-2019. Of these, nearly two-thirds were reported by auditors from the Big4 category. The most KAMs were reported to companies in the United Kingdom, Germany and France, and the field of activity with the most KAMs was Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. This paper concludes that there are factors that can affect audit quality as a result of reporting related party transactions, but by identifying them, it is possible to control better and manage the audit process, and thus the effectiveness and efficiency of the audit is increasing.

ABSTRACT. The current Romanian economic environment is defined by an ongoing evolution based on the growth of investments, the increase of the transactions volumes on the capital market, but also the expansion of the online trading background, being all sustained by the globalization. In this complex and dynamic context, information produced by accountants and validated by auditors has become a fundamental tool in supporting the individual investment decision-making process, having for sure an impact on investor`s overall behavior. Beside this, in the overall process there are also other factors with impact on the investors` way of making choices. Our study consists of an empirical assessment of the factors influencing 110 individual investors` behavior on the Romanian capital market, with focus on the financial statements role. Collecting their feedback via survey and applying qualitative and quantitative research methods, the main results reveal a relatively high importance given by investors to corporate financial reports with a differentiation, of course, between the forms of reporting included in the research. In their investment decision, the capital market players consider the most useful sections of the annual reports the ones that describe the corporate reporting policies, the financial position of the economic entity, the economic-financial analysis, but also the financial performances reported by the entity. Beside the disclosures factor, we studied also factors like knowledge, risk profile, behavior and dividends.

ABSTRACT. The objective of the paper is to demonstrate the role of accounting and ERP systems in sustainable development, as a result of the upward trend of the phenomenon of sustainable development of companies. The reason why we chose to observe what are the main implications of the two concepts in sustainable development, was the relationship between ERP systems and accounting. The big companies that provide accounting services have implemented ERP systems for the efficient management of the flow of information, offering increased support to accounting professionals in their daily activities, but also to managers in the decision-making process. The research method used by the authors was based on a quantitative research, having as a data source a questionnaire that was shared to a sample of respondents consisting of master's and PhD students from Bucharest University of Economics Studies, but also employees from the financial - accounting field. As a result of the study, the conclusion was reached that the accounting information structured and processed with ERP systems have a significant impact on the decision-making process to ensure sustainable development so that the companies carrying out activities in this field become "green companies". Sustainable development moots the necessity of carrying out of continuous changes in accounting, through various processes of automation and centralization of data for the purpose of satisfying the needs of all users of financial and accounting information. Through ERP systems, the accounting processes become effective and increase the efficiency of the employees, thus they can get involved in different projects for the purpose of intelligent and sustainable development of the companies. This research will bring to light different technological and accounting trends addressed by the respondents through the questionnaire used, outlining new tendencies and the importance of ERP systems in accounting and sustainability.

ABSTRACT. Management accounting is an integrated aspect of the decision-making, budgeting and managerial process and has an important mission on supporting management in making the best decisions. This article focuses on the knowledge of the management accounting concept and presents various approaches to its performance and strategy, through the analysis of descriptive statistics, of the influence of specialized journals, authors, publications, institutions and countries, as well as their bibliometric analysis, providing a holistic perspective on the researched field. This study aims to map the field of management accounting by providing data on the intellectual structure of knowledge and enabling the most influential articles, institutions, source titles, countries and authors. The findings of this bibliometric analysis can provide a solid basis for positioning real contributions in this field and detecting emerging trends and directions for future research. The main objective of this study is to analyze the current state of knowledge regarding managerial accounting using qualitative and quantitative literature review methods. This paper addresses the following research questions using appropriate bibliometric methods: What are the most influential journals, authors, countries, and research papers in the field? What are the key research trends related to management accounting that could open directions for unexplored avenues of research in this field? What are the most researched topics that have been studied most frequently and are currently attracting the most attention? Our study analyzed publications from 1975 to 2022, as the first publication on the platform containing complete information was in 1975. The sample of this study consisted in a total of 593 publications with 13,543 cited references, by 987 authors affiliated with 591 institutions from 75 countries/regions.

ABSTRACT. Corporate governance, as an important element from the economic environment is a topic of great interest. During the time, researchers tried to find the most efficient corporate governance characteristics, which have a direct impact over the company’s well-being. Thus, the present study contains a sample of 66 companies, for the period 2016-2021 listed on the BVB (Bucharest Stock Exchange). For the first step, the corporate governance score was computed, by ranking the responses with 1 if they comply or 0 if they do not follow the good conduit of corporate governance, so it can be seen the evolution of the quality of reporting. Then, to further conduct the analysis, from the” Comply-Explain” statement five elements which underlines the qualitative reporting were selected: EQUIL (Equilibrium of board members), INDEP (Independence of board members), NOM (Selection of the board members), REM (Remuneration policy) and AUDIT (Audit committee). In the literature, several elements were the key points, which indicated whether a business has a qualitative reporting or not. Taking into account the most studies, the above-mentioned elements were selected and analyzed. In the case of Romania, particularly taking the corporate governance score it could be seen that there is a positive evolution for the period 2016-2021. In case of the extracted elements which are part of the qualitative reporting, it can be seen, that they vary from a year to another, but generally presenting a positive trend. This is an encouraging aspect, meaning that businesses start to acknowledge the fact that a qualitative reporting will assure the long-term benefits for the companies.

ABSTRACT. The act of fraud has been practiced since ancient times and manifests itself in different ways. The aim of the study is to apply the Beneish score on Romanian firms and to identify which indicators are sensitive to the state of fraud. The sample was selected from the Bucharest Stock Exchange and consists of 66 companies traded on the main market for the years 2016-2021. The collected data were analyzed by year-by-year and cross-sectional methods (panel data) using manually collected information extracted from financial statements downloaded from the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Based on this data, the Beneish score was calculated and then statistical tests were performed. Using the results obtained from the Beneish Score calculation, we were able to divide the companies into two groups. The results clearly show that the group with no likelihood of fraud risk has lower scores for the eight indicators and the bankruptcy group has lower values. We identified sensitive items in both states such as DSRI (Days Sales Receivable Index), GMI (Gross Margin Index), SGAI (Selling General and Administrative Expense Index). In conclusion, several theories or hypotheses are offered to explain the underlying motivations for fraud. Romanian companies listed on regulated markets can be classified into risk groups in terms of fraudulent financial statements by applying the Beneish score. After statistical processing, it was concluded that not all models existing in the literature can be applied to any sample and cannot have the same purpose, because the type of companies differs, the financial data changes from one year to another, the object of activity changes from one year to another.

ABSTRACT. We have to face challenging and complex times. People and mostly leaders have to be kind and wise realizing that only together within local communities they might make a positive difference in each of us and within the whole group of people to whom they interact. They not only have to demonstrate empathy and compassion, but to open themselves to benefit from the empathy and compassion that might arise from others. People have to be connected at a human level allowing and stimulating both professional and personal development. They have to be good and correspondingly to do good for other. From sharing to carrying is an important motto of collaborative economics. People have to take into account the principles of practical wisdom by being able to master not only a rational behavior but also emotional intelligence. Collaboration challenges people to think, articulate and receive clarity about their competencies. It serves as a mirror where people realize that because two or more heads are better than one, creative, transformative and innovative leaders have to stimulate team and trust building. From a methodological point of view our paper focuses on qualitative methods based also on a comparative coherent analyze of best practices examples. One of the key conclusions is the need to look for a more human centered interdisciplinary approach. Our society needs new creative and innovative solutions to complex business, organizational, local and global problems. We are challenged to become a better and higher human versions of ourselves and to be happy to put it in the service of others.

ABSTRACT. The main goal of the paper is to highlight the potential impact of collaborative online platforms in Romania in order to support collaborative and sharing economy implementation within our country. Due to the challenges affecting the whole world from a multidimensional perspective (social, cultural, economic, environment, political, geo-politic and ethical) in the context of an unstable, turbulent and complex framework our team identified some alternative creative and innovative business solutions. These solutions might help business sector to use scarce resources in a more effective and efficient way such as to provide a sustainable and healthy long-run development on its macro, mezzo and micro levels. We focus on the Romanian business sector. By using a diversified research methodology, we highlighted the potential role main actors might play on the regional level in order to better support business sector by analyzing their strengths and opportunities on the local market. In order to facilitate a better understanding of the business modern models that might be applied our team suggests a broader approach that focus on the human contribution and mostly on the professional networking that have to be developed based on the modern technologies, mostly on ITC. Our results showed an important development of shared economy instruments that have also a great potential from an economic, social, cultural, political and ecological point of view. Thus, we suggest a series of interconnected actions that might be helpful in order to overturn the turbulent economic, social, ecological context by providing a smart, sustainable, inclusive and value based alternative for a long-run development.

ABSTRACT. A variety of topical global phenomena and trends are having an impact on businesses, while inevitably affecting investor information requirements as well; among those, climate change is one of the most notable concern. Moreover, admittedly nowadays achieving performance-based goals is becoming more connected to a proactive commitment to corporate social responsibility, environmental protection and ethical governance. As a consequence, non-financial disclosure endeavors constitute a delicate but major issue for investors, companies and accounting professionals alike. Currently, we are witnessing numerous changes and intensive debates in the corporate climate disclosure landscape. During the last decade, disclosure demands have risen considerably for information concerning the financial risks that companies face related to the climate, but even more so from investors with international investment portfolios. Thus, in the absence of regulatory disclosure requirements, a number of voluntary reporting frameworks have been developed. Furthermore, despite the fact that these frameworks have helped companies focus on climate change as a commercial issue, investors and issuers soon complained about the multitude of rules and demanded convergence and harmonization of reporting standards in this matter, which led to a quick proliferation of divergent standards. However, due to the efforts of leaders in the global reporting community, significant progress toward this harmonization has been made last year, with continuing debates and proposals of international bodies such as: SEC, EFRAG, IOSCO, SASB and the most recently created International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). Consequently, the paper argues that it is imperative to gain clarity and uniformity from all the current efforts targeting framework development, in order to attain reliable high-quality outputs. Thus, the paper aims to identify the current global dynamics pertaining to sustainability reporting, to compare the main existent frameworks, while analyzing their usage, benefits costs and limitations.

ABSTRACT. Interest in sustainability has grown significantly in modern society, characterized by more and more problems related to socio-economic inequalities, health crises, interstate conflicts and climate change. The transition towards sustainability is a current topic and has experienced considerable development in the last 30 years. Currently there is a wide variety of definitions, interpretations and research on this subject, being widely debated all over the globe and being considered more and more important and relevant to take into account, in order to ensure the well-being of the present and future society. However, it is still confusing to many people and it deserves continuous research, especially on the relationship between sustainability and the value creation process. Therefore, a descriptive and conceptual research is conducted, from a multidimensional approach, both at microeconomic and macroeconomic level, to delimit the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development, identifying their various characteristics, differences and similarities, in terms of spatiality, temporality and functionality, in relation to sustainable value creation, which aim is to generate a positive impact on economy, society and planet. Furthermore, the various dimensions that sustainability has known over time are exposed (like: weak sustainability, strong sustainability, circular economy, corporate social responsibility, corporate sustainability), together with the change of economic theories. The research took shape by studying the value-sustainability relationship and proposing an integrated approach of microeconomic and macroeconomic interaction on the creation of sustainable value. Therefore, this work does not intend to conclude what sustainability is, the meaning being far from being closed, but it enriches the debate on some of the multitude of dimensions and approaches of sustainability in relation to value creation.

ABSTRACT. Initially discovered in Wuhan, SARS-CoV-2 wreaked havoc globally. However, the unfavorable evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic brought negative effects in the worldwide economies. Regardless of whether the state is in a period of evolution or stagnant, the pandemic has created a puzzling framework. Based on this unfavorable situation, a research of the scientific literature was conducted, in order to collect all the relevant perspectives. The research intends to be mapping the COVID-19 economy using a bibliometric analysis through the application VOSviewer 1.6.18, Web of Science being chosen as it is an important database with papers from various research areas belonging to famous international publications. The bibliometric analysis was conducted considering the fields of Economics, Business, Business Finance, Management, Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism. The analysis has a quantitative approach, observing the level of interest given by researchers to this specific topic – the COVID-19 economy. All the information is based on the number of published articles and the field addressed. The literature analysis focuses on three years, starting with 2019. This time frame was chosen due to the main objective of the research paper – to examine the evolution of the literature comparing to the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. Insightful judgments assess the increased interest of researchers in the keyword – COVID-19, and all the related concepts. Also, it was noted that 2021 was the year with an impressive number of publications on this topic, assessing that researchers were particularly interested in the beginning of the pandemic. In fact, this crisis will continue to influence the society, encountering different issues from the pre-pandemic period and further studies should be performed.

ABSTRACT. Macroeconomics has been increasingly questioned after the Great Recession that has started in September 2007. The critics disputed its unrealistic assumptions, the overreliance on quantitative methods and, not least, the growing lack of pluralism and teaching imperfections. This paper engages with this last point investigating what is the role of methodological pluralism in macroeconomics and which are its consequences. We define here methodological pluralism as a normative stance that entails tolerance towards the methods and methodologies advanced in macroeconomics by various groups of economists. The first application of methodological pluralism to macroeconomics has been advanced by Sheila Dow in 1985, in the context of discussing the coexistence of a plurality of schools of thought in macroeconomics and their different approaches to macroeconomics and economic policies. Keynes established macroeconomics as an autonomous discipline in the 1930s as a consequence of a paradigm shift supported by a methodological revolution, followed in the 1970s by a counterrevolution led by Lucas. The development of macroeconomics has been characterized by the evolving confrontation between Keynesian and classical ideas that ignored the contributions of heterodox schools of thought. This entry, using also as exemplars the Post- Keynesian and Austrian schools, argues that there is a deficit of pluralism in macroeconomics that stems from the adoption of a monist methodological paradigm uncritically supported by a dogmatic pedagogical strategy. Macroeconomics has to regain a richer empirical content while encouraging alternative interpretations of its implications for policy. To this end, the curriculum has to reintroduce economic history and history of economic thought, to enable the students to understand better the functioning of the economy and its implications for economic policy.

Jel Codes: B22; B25; B41

ABSTRACT. The paper proposes a critical analysis of some theoretical aspects of social justice and economic sustainability. For the field of social justice, the logical bases of three theoretical models (Rawls, Nozick and Nussbaum) as well as the autopoietic model of social justice will be presented and critically analysed. Another important aspect of the field of social justice is ensuring an equivalence between the norms that regulates the participation of individuals in the primary distribution of the economic product of society and the functioning of the rule of law. Thus, the paper will argue that, from the perspective of the rule of law, it does not matter if the principles of social justice are implemented in the norms, but only if the implemented norms are respected. Some aspects of state intervention in society will be identified and analysed. As is known, the four pillars of sustainability (human, social, economic, environmental) aim to ensure justice (economic, social, environmental, climatic, ecological, etc.) at the level of society, considering a fair distribution of the consumption of resources available to us at the present time. Economic sustainability supports long-term economic growth, provides individuals with a quality of life without negative impact on the social, cultural and environmental aspects of the society in which they live. The issue of ensuring intergenerational equity, which refers to responsible consumption of resources so that future generations are not affected, will also be discussed in the paper. Thus, the observation and analysis of the relationship between social justice and economic sustainability, the way in which they can support each other, is the theme that this paper will develop.

ABSTRACT. The paper presents the effects of the change in the fiscal regime of part-time employment contracts from the perspective of the labour market, respectively of jobs, the level of income from work and the level of work taxation. The investigation starts from the fiscal framework established by the Romanian government this year, but takes into account the characteristics of part-time employment contracts over the last few years, but also in the future, in the context of the transformations that have taken place in the labour market and in labour relations. Among the real effects pursued by the government can be counted the increase in collection to the state budget, the increase in the earnings of certain categories of the population, the reduction of the level of illegal work. The new fiscal regime involves a series of risks: the risk of being closed the part-time employment contracts, implicitly the dismissal of employees for whom employers no longer wants or can no longer pay. Another risk is the influence of inflation, because with the increase in costs, it will also be decided to increase the prices of products/services, which will erode the revenues obtained by population. Finally, an increase in the informal labour market can also be detected because undeclared work can be an outlet for unwanted coercion. Based on the logical and qualitative, conceptual and institutional analysis, as well as some quantitative estimates (level, trends, etc.), were evaluated several possibilities for establishing the causal and conditional relationships between the main indicators of the labour market and the fiscal regime.

ABSTRACT. Every year the state loses money due to the tax fraud and tax evasion. The lost public funds could be used for providing general public services. Tax evasion erodes tax compliance and intensify the fight of authorities against this phenomenon. The primary goal of the paper is to identify and explore pattern of scientific collaboration in the field of tax evasion during 1975 – 2022. We analysed connections between authors, journals, countries and institutions to determine the information flow from a worldwide perspective. We employed information from the Web of Science repository and explored 1456 publications. We provide a bibliometric analysis and network visualisation using CiteSpace. 2478 authors, 1355 institutions, 724 journals and 98 countries were involved in the 1456 publications in the sample. The most productive country is the USA, the most productive author is McGee R.W., the most productive institution is the League of European Research Universities, the most productive journal is Journal of Public Economics. The analysis highlights that the most productive authors are also the most collaborative, but the most collaborative institution is Florida International University. The study offers an image about the most co-cited references, authors (Allingham M.) and journals (Journal of Public Economics). In the field, a number of general subjects have been covered over the past 40 years (tax evasion, tax avoidance, aggressiveness, incentive, firm, taxation, income tax). This work can serve as a framework for future research in the field, it maps the literature on tax evasion.

ABSTRACT. Previous studies failed to establish precisely what the impact of taxation is on economic growth. In an economy facing multiple crises (economic, pandemic, political and security crisis, energy crisis) it is necessary to determine what are the implications of fiscal changes on economic evolution. This paper maps the link between taxation and economic growth in the member countries of the European Union, considering panel data for the period 2000-2021, to identify specific implications that taxation has on the phenomenon of economic growth. In the present research, were applied qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. The qualitative analysis of the study involved a bibliometric analysis of the existing literature and visual mapping of the data, intending to highlight the differences between the values of the variables recorded in the member countries. The quantitative research methodology assumed the empirical analysis of data recorded in the period 2000-2021 through an OLS panel data regression with fixed and random effects to identify the reaction of the growth rate of the gross domestic product as a descriptive variable for economic growth to changes in direct and indirect taxes, considered as descriptors of taxation. Our results indicate a relationship between taxation and economic growth, with indirect taxes having a higher significance. The existence of this relationship must be considered when developing fiscal policies, especially in member countries that are also part of the Eurozone, countries that can no longer use monetary policies as levers to reduce economic shocks. Also, considering the specific relationship of each country between taxation and economic growth, fiscal measures can be taken that meet the expected results, and thus the efficiency of fiscal policies can be increased in any economic context.

ABSTRACT. Economists argue that macroeconomic activity can be affected differently, through direct taxes and indirect taxes. the impact of tax levies on the economy is contradictory, there are studies that show their negative influence, and others support the positive influence of taxes on the economy of a state. These debates and contradictory results are a consequence of the way of using fiscal policy instruments, within each state, but also of the level of development, as well as of the research method used and the variables included in the model. Also, social security contributions, which are part of the category of mandatory withdrawals, are of high importance element. The objective of the present research refers to the investigation of the impact of tax revenues, but also of social security contributions on the gross domestic product, the main measure of the size of the economy, with the help of the statistical program EViews. The reference period within the panel study, it covers the years 2005-2020, the data being quarterly, and the empirical results cover both developing and developed nations in the Central and Eastern European Union. The choice of year 2005 as the starting period is motivated by highlighting the period before and after the economic-financial crisis, regarding the analysis of the existing interaction between the fiscal system and the economy of the states in the sample. The research methodology involves the study of three heterogeneous panel groups. The analysis method is the random effect panel regression, on the basis of which it was demonstrated that there are significant and positive correlations between the fiscal variables and the gross domestic product. This draws attention to the fact that the fiscal effect of the included variables on the gross domestic product is lower, but not negligible, in relation to other influencing factors, which were not taken into account in the present analysis.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of the tax system is to achieve the objectives of the fiscal policy, in the most efficient way, in which the costs of tax collection do not affect the economy. Through taxation, as the main instrument of fiscal policy, the aim is not only to cover government expenditures but also to redistribute income and stabilize the economy, so that economic growth can be supported. The development of states, at an economic, social, political, but also cultural level, largely depends on the ability of their governments to collect public revenues, as well as to ensure the stability of the existing fiscal system, which can create the optimal conditions for economic development and social welfare. The objective of this research is to highlight the impact that fiscal and social policies have on the economy, within the emerging and developed countries of the Central and Eastern European Union member states, in the period 2005-2020. The research methodology involves the application of the autoregressive regression model (VAR), which will make it possible to identify the impulse-response functions exerted by the fiscal variables on the gross domestic product. Thus, by analyzing the historical data, it is desired to provide some forecasts regarding the response of the economy to the shocks generated by direct and indirect taxes, respectively by social security contributions. The research results reveal that indirect taxes affect the gross domestic product very little and the answer is not significant. Regarding the effects of direct taxes, but also of mandatory social contributions, the results show a clear and significant negative impact on the gross domestic product, respectively on the economy as a whole.

ABSTRACT. Among European countries, there are still great differences in the fiscal tax and social contribution area and this leads to different responses in front of financial and economic shocks. Tax and social contributions are impacting on the real wages and on the labour markets. They are significant for unemployment rates and for immigration process in the European countries. This research topic is quite recent and so far, there were investigated rather legal aspects of the labour markets and less the economic impact on labour markets and on immigration process. Being under-investigated, it deserves a greater attention from the economic point of view, because in the European area there is a trend for fiscal harmonization. We have analysed the statistical data of fiscal tax, social contributions, unemployment rate and immigrants into the European countries and emphasized the correlations between those variables. Because there are some European countries with high employment, although the social contributions are high, and this is not a regular relation. Also, there are European countries with high unemployment rate and high immigration inflows. This analysis is also important for Romania in relation with the European countries that receive most of the Romanian immigrants, namely UK, Germany, Spain and Italy. The conclusions of the analysis support important policy recommendations in the social and fiscal field and for the European labour markets, for reducing unemployment and immigration process. Conclusions for Romania in particular could help the government to design some adequate social and fiscal policies to stop the significant brain drain Romania is facing for the last two decades.

ABSTRACT. This paper proposes a macroeconomic approach to highlight the relation between fiscal policy, institutional quality, and foreign direct investment (FDI). Moreover, we explore how the effective tax rate and the quality of institutions affect the FDI at the sectoral level. Our analysis comprises the European countries. The data are the inward FDI (net position) per country and sector. For a strong robustness check, we employ the FDI stock as well. The data sources are the OECD databases Statistics. The length of the period studied lasts from 2000 to the present. The results show that effective taxation is first considered when new FDI are proposed.

ABSTRACT. The aim of our research was to see if the digitalization of public services has an influence on economic and financial crime. We have splitted economic and financial crime into its main forms: corruption, shadow economy, money laundering and cybercrime, and we have chosen relevant indicators to measure them. For the digitalization of public services we considered some specific indicators regarding the quality of online services, the development degree of telecommunications infrastructure and the e-government involvement. We also considered a set of control variables that might affect the nexus between the main variables. Our sample was composed by 185 countries. We have split it in developed and developing countries. All our processings were done in Eviews 7, using Panel Least Squared Method. We tested the relationship between the digitalization of public services and each component of economic and financial crime. The general conclusion was that economic and financial crime shows a decrease trend with an increase of digitalization in the public services field. As particular cases, regarding corruption, we could observe a slight increase for developing countries. Also, regarding shadow economy, for some cases corresponding to developing countries, public services digitalization leads to the raise of shadow economy. Despite our results, we must adopt policies to prevent and combat economic and financial crime. Our study represents a missing piece in the specialized literature because it includes a wider sample and a more complex set of indicators. It can also be very useful for the parties involved in making financial decisions in the government because we approach the idea of developing national strategies and policies regarding the economic and financial crime issue. The general public must understand that digitalization is not a cause for concern when law is respected. If we have functional policies, technology will become citizen's most accessible tool.

ABSTRACT. Countries and international institutions all over the world have been implementing various financial support schemes following the financial crisis that started in December 2007 and the recession it generated, in their common desiderate to sustain the healthy development of small companies. SMEs are considered to be one of the engines of economic growth and an instrument for assuring a more stable employment rate. This study provides insight into the effects of public attempts to address market failure through financial aid as well as considerations regarding the mechanisms used and their efficacy by drawing on literature subject to the impact of governmental initiatives. The purpose of the study is to comprehend the research trends on this topic considering its significant repercussions, therefore it examines a wide range of publications by using a semi-systematic literature review methodology. It indicates both the positive and negative effects of government aid programs on SMEs' business prosperity and job protection (bureaucracy, low applicability or reduced penetration rate, short-term support, etc.). Using the Theory-Context-Characteristics-Methodology (TCCM) framework, we aim to describe potential future research topics for this area of concern. By recognizing important journals, noteworthy organizations, governments, the most cited terms, and the co-citation system of concepts, it depicts the spectrum of activity of the subject. Moreover, the literature assessment will allow meaningful comparison between the effects of solutions developed by European governments or international public organizations on beneficiaries. The paper’s final goal is to establish a list of suggestions for future programs to be developed in order to reach and impact the Romanian small business environment, made possible by acknowledging and understanding the strategies and leverages created by effective policymakers.

ABSTRACT. The joining of European countries into the European Union creates an easier flow, especially for goods and services. The number and regulations of import that have been carried out separately by each country can now become a single unit factor. Therefore, with the existence of the European Union, it is expected that there will be import polarization, both destination countries and goods types. This study aims to find out: the impact of the formation of the European Union on Indonesian exports (and imports) to (from) member countries; shifting in types of export (import) products to (from) each European Union member; changes in export (import) patterns for cultural products, since digital economy was introduced. The methodology used in this study is gravity model, analyzed by panel data regression. The countries studied are Indonesia and all European Union members. Export (import) products are classified based on consumer goods (foodstuff, clothing, cosmetics, IT products and automobile products) and cultural goods (music, film, broadcasting, and publishing) using HS code, from 1991 to 2021. The results of the study show that: there was a decrease in the number of exports to most of the European Union countries, and an increase in only a small part (there is polarization pattern), on the other hand, there was an increase in Indonesia's imports from the European Union; there is a decrease in exports of food products, as well as an increase in clothing products, and cultural products, and conversely an increase in Indonesia's imports of IT and automobile products; there was an increase in exports of cultural products after the digital economy era, as well as an increase in Indonesia's imports of cultural products from the European Union.

ABSTRACT. In a business environment where social media dominates the communication landscape of modern companies, the Business-to-Business (B2B) sector must adapt to survive the intensive international competition. In the Business-to-Business sector the influencer marketing activity is gaining ground but still there are issues with it. Influencer marketing activities and the usage of influencers on social media has become a tool, mostly designed for the Business to Consumer sector, based on in impact of online celebrities have on the final consumers and their buying behaviour. But what happens if we use influencer marketing in the Business-to-Business sector? The aim of this paper is to bring forth a better understanding of how influencer marketing or the methods used by the influencers can develop Business-to-Business marketing and the company as a hole. The current article will present the concept and the main types of influencer marketing, and how these marketing tools can be used in the Business-to-Business approach. A secondary component of the paper will be based on underlining the main different approaches that need to be taken when dealing with influencer marketing activity for Business to Business and Business to Consumer companies. Thirdly the current article will point out some important influencer marketing strategies that can and should be implemented to improve the Business-to-Business activity of one’s company, while presenting several statistics that support this secondary data analysis. Closing the paper, we will show some managerial and practical implications as well as some future trends in the business, as well as some limitations and disadvantages for this type of business approach.

ABSTRACT. The high mobility of people requires the availability of goods and services, which must be fast and follows consumer demand. The presence and advancement of technology enable consumers to access the internet and choose the desired product; one way to do this is through e-commerce websites. Using e-commerce websites for promotion, product development, online transactions, product delivery, and after-sales support, which provide mutual backing, facilitates sellers and buyers to transact more effectively and efficiently. It is crucial for business actors in the digital era, such as e-commerce websites, to pay attention to things that can attract customers. This study aims to determine the effect of information quality, website aesthetics, and Islamic physical attributes on purchase intention, with customer satisfaction as a mediating variable. This study uses a quantitative approach and obtains information by distributing online questionnaires. The sampling technique uses probability sampling. The number of samples is 120 respondents who meet the criteria, namely Muslim women with a minimum age of 18 years, domiciled in Greater Jakarta, and have explored the Lozy Hijab official website but have never bought products through the website. The data analysis used Structural Equation Model (SEM PLS) technique with SmartPLS 3.0 software. The test results show that the variables of information quality and website aesthetics significantly positively affect customer satisfaction. The customer satisfaction variable has a significant positive effect on purchase intention, but the Islamic physical attributes variable does not significantly affect customer satisfaction. It can be concluded that, it is very important to provide satisfaction when surfing the website through the quality information and also the aesthetic layout on the website. So that the higher the customer satisfaction, the higher the purchase intention on the official website.

ABSTRACT. According to European Union, “2011-2020 was the warmest decade recorded, with global average temperature reaching 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels in 2019. Human-induced global warming is presently increasing at a rate of 0.2°C per decade’’. The main reasons for these trends are the burning of coal, oil and gas, deforestation, increased livestock farming, and the release of fluorinated gases. On the surface, the activities described are a consequence of the functioning of the industry, but in practice, all these activities are aimed at satisfying end-user demand. In this sense, consumers determine the dynamics and the extent of the impact of industrial production on the environment and, if we accept this argument, on climate change. This argument is shared by a considerable number of people and institutions, which in turn makes the study of sustainable consumer action extremely important to achieve sustainability goals. The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of a survey on sustainable consumer actions among 342 respondents from the city of Varna, Bulgaria, in the scientific project "Sustainable Urban Consumption - Regional Differences". The survey collected data on actions related to household energy efficiency, electricity and water consumption, food consumption, transportation use, and product disposal. Based on the developed indexes by those arias and aggregate behavioral index (Zhelev et al., 2021), indexes by individual actions are calculated for the city of Varna. The strength of the impact of the indices by action type and the degree of impact is analysed to determine the aggregated behavioral index. Specific relationships between demographic characteristics of respondents, such as education, income, size of the dwelling, number of persons in the household, etc., and sustained consumption actions are also examined. The results of the analysis can be used in subsequent studies of sustainable consumer actions, for profiling and segmenting the urban population in communication planning and policy implementation to achieve sustainability goals.

ABSTRACT. The global cosmetics market is dynamic and significant in size, moreover it is one of the most important part of consumer market. Cosmetic products’ market has specific characteristics: this industry is constantly expanding its influence to different target audiences and covers all classes of consumers in terms of their income. As a result, marketing strategy of cosmetics corporations exists on different levels: main (global) and adapted (for the region or definite country). Generally, it connects with different influential factors and specifics. Based on this, main aim of this study is to identify and evaluate the key factors of cosmetics market globally, and also evaluate the same for Ukrainian market. Main idea is find a correlation and to assess which factors have bigger influence for the consumer demand: global trends or local obstacles and how to prepare basic for an adequate market analysis for Ukrainian local cosmetics brands and affiliates of worldwide corporations.

In order to collect data about global tendencies authours collect existed statistics data, annual reports and scientific papers for this topic. For receiving results and collecting data about Ukrainian consumers closed-ended questionnaires were used as a method of collecting preliminary information. The total number of respondents was 1050 people. Results were classified, most important key success factors were highlighted for both levels and then multicriteria techniques were used to provide an analysis of correlation. Our results demonstrated that despite on general difference of well-being of consumers in USA, Canada and European countries, such country as Ukraine is not differ in consumer preferences by price, as a main factor, which is the most influential in third world countries, but has its own specific factors more close to Asian market or developing economies, in general.

ABSTRACT. More than ever, in this period it is very important to communicate effectively, on a personal and professional level. We have to find the most useful methods and techniques for the information we want to transmit or receive. After 2020, many aspects have changed in the communication process, especially in the field of business communication. The existing communication strategy in 2022 is no longer the same as in 2019, for most people, private companies or public institutions. The way we communicate with family, with employees, with clients, with suppliers, with pupils, with students has changed a lot. The most important changes in the communication process were generated by the pandemic, war and other crisis situations that had effects on people and companies. The main objective of this research work is to emphasize the importance of efficiency in the communication process and also the power that information transmitted or received in real time can have. To identify the results, I included the analysis of documents, official surveys and studies published in the field. Also, I discussed with communication specialists and entrepreneurs in the field of communication, in order to obtain the most relevant solutions regarding this subject. As preliminary results, the following can be mentioned: the transmission and reception of information in real time together with the feedback in real time can be real solutions for solving problems related to (business) communication, within private companies and public institutions. The communication process is at a different level, compared to the past period, from many points of view. People and companies have changed the way they communicate, they have changed the channels through which they communicate, they have even changed the frequency with which they communicate. The key words for the period we are in can be: adaptation and efficiency.

ABSTRACT. The rise of the Internet was closely followed by the emergence of a new advertising medium – Online Advertising. Its rapid growth owes much to the tremendous advancements of the so-called Advertising Technology or AdTech. The AdTech improvements led to a substantial reduction in the cost of targeting and, consequently, to increased media investments from advertisers. Programmatic advertising, the most technologically advanced form of online advertising, makes use of advanced media trading algorithms, including machine learning. It involves a high degree of technological complexity coupled with a lack of transparency, and has many advertisers complaining that it works like a ’black box’. The main technological evolutions that shaped the industry will be critically analyzed, with a focus on the effects of this growing technological complexity over the market structure. The emergence of ever-more complex industry algorithms was fueled by a growing quantity of user data and led to complaints from the general public and, recently, to legal actions against the two companies that dominate the market, Google and Facebook. Following an overview of the settled and ongoing legal cases, we conclude that the impact of the rulings, especially the potential ban on the use of 3rd party cookies, could present a huge challenge for advertisers and completely transform the industry. Non-cookie based solutions will need to be developed, but this could negatively impact the advertisers’ results. The Online Advertising industry, as a whole, will need to completely rethink its way of functioning, evolving towards a more sustainable and privacy-respectful business model. Our paper aims to present the emergence of Online Advertising, its evolution in the past three decades, the role of Advertising Technology (AdTech) in shaping the industry’s practices and the impact of the legal actions it is currently confronted with.

ABSTRACT. This research aims to evaluate whether consumers can classify perfumes into two different pricing groups, above or under a specific threshold (one hundred euros for a bottle of 50ml), without seeing their brand name or labelling. To this end, we have chosen four types of fragrances (floral, citrus, woody, and fresh) for males and females, totalling 16 perfumes. We decided to separate scents based on their substantial odour difference: floral perfumes offer a sweet scent, citrus products smell of oranges and lemons, woody fragrances have a moss, earthy aroma, and fresh perfumes smell of mountain air and ocean. We set these up on separate paper testing strips within three different timeframes from the beginning of the trials (less than 1 minute, less than 1 hour, and less than 3 hours). All the products used in our tests were labelled Eau de toilette, as opposed to Eau de perfume, as it is one of the most common types of perfumes, with a scent focused more on the middle notes and persistence of up to 6 hours. Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to predict the preferences of 11 participants within a single-session neuroscience experiment. All participants were equipped with the g.Nautilus wearable EEG headset with 16 dry electrodes to study their brain activity while they were smelling the strips. We aimed to increase the data gathered from this initiative and set a baseline related to the participant's personal preferences using a separate questionnaire. Our initial study provides valuable insights into the use of EEG for assessing consumer behaviour when shopping for fragrances. Results show that brain responses to olfactory stimulation can be used to predict the preference and the perceived value of perfumes.

ABSTRACT. The qualitative determination of the budget finds its expression in the structures of expenses, incomes and results. Within the budget, the meaning given to the notion of expenses is both that of consumption and that of payments. If expenses in the form of consumption are specific to internal processes, which transform the volume and structure of resources managed by the enterprise, those in the form of payments are own cash flows. In their quality of consumption, the expenses of an enterprise are characterized in terms of value by the consumption of raw materials and materials, the labor force, the allocation by depreciation of the cost of fixed assets or the payment of cash to satisfy productive or non-productive needs, as well as the reimbursements of credits in a certain accounting period. The financing or coverage of the incurred expenses is ensured through the income generated either as an economic result of the company's activities, or in the process of distribution of the gross domestic product. Defined from this point of view, revenues express the resources that belong to the enterprise within the distribution process or obtained as results of its own activity. Revenues in the form of results are constituted as an effect of expenses made by an enterprise, in order to obtain products, works and services. In the conditions of the existence of the production of goods, all these economic results are transformed into money, and the revenues constituted on this occasion represent precisely the source destined to cover the expenses. In this way, the incomes obtained during the course of an economic circuit are a consequence and at the same time a condition for resuming the circuit of resources.

ABSTRACT. Current challenges and mutations in the world are affecting businesses worldwide. Up- and down-stream processes need to be readjusted, as there are few things that remain "the old usual". Environmental constraints, health concerns, military risks, disruption in the supply chain led to a more pressing need to revise the business process. The role and capacity of technology in overcoming scarcity of resources is also being questioned, as the Jevons Paradox appears in case of many vital resources. Businesses can be separated into those who are green washing their operations and those who really understand the urgency to finding alternatives and the responsibility that they have. In the digital era of “fake news” the transmission of information about and from companies have a great impact. ESG (Environmental, Societal and Governance) reporting initiatives have had a rough start and continue to be seen as to broad in scope, irrelevant and unreliable, by some. Others are already finding ways to reduce to declarative power of it, by overlooking their shortcoming in some areas and overemphasizing their improvements, in others. Based on voluntary disclosure, many companies just leave out the externalities they create and focus on their achievements. This article aims to provide an overview of some studies that have stressed out the imperative to change the production patterns, as current business model don’t provide a sustainable approach. Using secondary data, the article provides a critical approach to some business practices, on one hand, and offers some examples of good practices, on the other.

ABSTRACT. The creation and proper regulation of a single market for data is of unprecedented importance, even more so as Artificial Intelligence starts to be used on an increasingly large scale, and humanity needs a proper capability to control this data in a sustainable economy and society. This article aims to address an important and forward-looking issue for a better understanding of the social and especially the economic implications of the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence. To carry out this analysis, we propose to start from the moment of the emergence of this trend and carry out a study of how previous waves of automation have changed the face of the labour market of labour supply and demand, of past opportunities. If the encouraging effects are more often identified and presented worldwide, this paper aims to analyse some of the inconveniences that Artificial Intelligence can produce for labour market actors and not only. Sooner or later these effects will become visible and if the potential impact is not well identified market failure may lead to negative externalities. At this moment these negative effects are not obvious but the new disruptive technologies animate markets exponentially and bring massive changes especially when you expect less. We will also capture the experiences advanced and emerging economies have had with the phenomenon of automation, robotisation on the road to Artificial Intelligence. This approach will give us some insights into the likely projection of the widespread use of Artificial Intelligence on the labour market, and the global inequalities caused by this trend, especially in developing countries.

ABSTRACT. The recent events that have taken place globally, often characterized as facilitators of unexpected changes in almost all fields of activity, determined new key directions to be followed, the potential for their future support and development being also realized. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the entrepreneurial activity itself has undergone sudden shifts, conducted by the desire to survive in uncertain times. As a result, the main actors involved in the entrepreneurial processes have chosen either to focus on the existing business solutions expansion, or on the creation and adoption of new ones, both options offering, in fact, alternatives to the traditional business models.

On the other hand, the national lockdowns have led to an intensive digital transformation, especially of the entrepreneurial field, but not only. In this regard, cloud computing became a certain direction of interest for practitioners. Hence, an unforeseen digital trial resulted. While the pandemic accelerated the migration to cloud as a solution to survive in a different market context, the question is how the entrepreneurs will perceive this option in a post-pandemic world? Undoubtedly, the implementation of future action decisions involves the detailed analysis of the potential benefits and of the relationship between the involved inputs and the expected outputs.

Under these circumstances, the main aim of the present research is to highlight the significance of cloud computing during and post-pandemic, taking into consideration the entrepreneurial activity. In order to achieve the stated goal, both fundamental and empirical approaches were considered. The research results illustrate the discrepancies between the countries in terms of adopting cloud computing solutions for entrepreneurial activity, considering the evidence obtained during and post-pandemic. Additionally, the opportunities and challenges of cloud computing adoption were discussed.

ABSTRACT. The concept of circular economy became critically important with high levels of resource use, balance of production and consumption, and waste. This concept aims to protect the economic value of the product with less material. Although countries make smart practices for waste management, these systems can only become efficient with the conscious full support of citizens. User acceptance is required in order for smart waste management applications to be widespread and used all over the world. Expanding user adaptation to environmental management, especially in developing countries, is critical for a sustainable world. This study presents the concept of social complementary solutions within the framework of a systematic literature review, focusing on social complementary solutions of waste management research, including cultural adaptation, user ability and well-being in the literature. A systematic literature review was provided to discover the current state of social complementary solutions in waste management field and extract the features of the research area and conceptually reveal where and what kind of studies should be done in the field.

Information systems achieve success by using social complementary factors such as culture, compliance, education, adaptation, user feedback analysis, integration, senior management support. Therefore, the acceptance, implementation and ownership of waste management systems by city citizens, including economic, political, cultural and behavioral influences, will also occur with these social supporting factors. In the Web of Science Core Collection, studies on adaptation, user ability and well-being in waste management field were examined. While identifying and exploring the social complementary solutions and their factors in the literature we explored and visualized the topic and also described the directions for future research in the field. This research will contribute to the literature both by detecting gaps to be expected guiding future studies and by presenting the current situation.

ABSTRACT. Entrepreneurship is important for every economy as it encourages economic growth, self-employment and the creation of new jobs, as well as the development of innovations, all of which lead to social well-being. Entrepreneurship is a human activity of practical application of knowledge and skills with a high degree of manifestation of individual abilities. To succeed in establishing a new business entity, it is important to carry out a specialized innovative start-up training aimed at preparing people who want to become entrepreneurs, including active entrepreneurs, and which is carried out in order to build their knowledge and skills necessary for starting and running a business. The mentioned programme can be implemented in a traditional way, through a software platform for innovative management, as well as through Google apps. This paper discusses the possibility of implementing an innovative start-up programme relying on Google apps, based on the practical realization of one such programme implemented by the authors working with the users of regional innovation start-up centres in Serbia.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays we face a more sophisticated financial system where we can use different instruments to store and, if it is possible to multiply our values (flow of money through wages/incomes, take advantages in inflationary times, and diversify our possessions as wealth). Almost daily we face at least two decision – what to buy and with what money? Those decisions can have different impacts (positive or negative) and in different times (sort, medium and long term) on our wealth. Considering the main axioms of the orthodox economic theory of individual decision making (“More is Better”, “Invariance”, “Independence” in terms of budget constrains and indifference curves restrictions) are we rational in creating and diversifying our individual financial assets portfolios? In this paper we evaluate the Romanians individual contemporary behavior in terms of financial assets portfolio considering rational economic theory (traditional Expected Utility Theory) and irrational economic theory (The Prospect Theory) to explain the behavior of Romanians in terms of types, discounts, and risks of their general financial asset’s portfolios. Using empirical data, we evaluate if factors like frames, representatives, omission bias, regrets are more evident in financial and investment decisions than budget constrains and indifferent curves. The research work is based on statistical data published by central bank and financial supervision authority and government authority. The first results suggests that the financial decisions of individuals are based mostly on monetary assets like fiat currencies and different banking accounts (current, deposits, annuity).

ABSTRACT. The national cultural environment and business management frequently bring up various perspectives on this interrelationship. On one hand "national culture" and on the other hand "corporate culture", both present important landmarks in the approach to the management of cultural diversity. In this world of globalization, multiculturalism is becoming part of corporate strategies. So, to be able to manage cultural diversity, managers should identify and establish a "cultural diversity management model". Firstly, this paper presents and highlights the relevant studies to identify and measure culture, in particular, Hofstede's 6-D model (power distance (PDI), individualism (IDV), masculinity (MAS), uncertainty avoidance (UAI), long-term orientation (LTO) and indulgence (IND)). Secondly, it investigates the analysis of cultural model of the 26 member countries of the European Union (except Cyprus, due to lack of data). The essential direction of the research is the design of a European Union management cultural environment, the identification of similarities and differences. This paper will contribute to international management and will be a systematic insight for researchers.

ABSTRACT. In March 2022, ISSB published Exposure Draft IFRS S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information (General Requirements Exposure Draft) and Exposure Draft IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures (Climate Exposure Draft), as the first two standards for the presentation of the information related to sustainability. The aim of the study is the analysis of the letters of comments received on the first standard General requirements exposure draft (IFRS S1). The aim will be accomplished using content analysis, which will be used to emphasize respondents' perspectives and outline the trajectory of the standard. The content analysis seeks respondents' attitudes towards the ISSB's intention to publish reporting requirements that require an entity to disclose sustainability-related financial information on all of its significant sustainability-related risks and opportunities in order to provide the public a complete set of financial disclosures related to sustainability. The objective of the public consultation will be to develop a global base of sustainability-related presentations designed to meet the information requirements of investors when determining the enterprise's value. Due to the importance of both financial and non-financial information, the public welcomes the ISSB's initiative with great enthusiasm, as evidenced by the significant number of comment letters received. Typically, sustainability and reporting are addressed in a different document. However, an increasing number of businesses are generating an integrated report that focuses on environmental statistics, sustainability, personnel, and the overall sustainability of the business.

ABSTRACT. The digital transformation in accessing healthcare has only been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. People all over the world have already been using digital health technologies before 2020, but the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic contributed to the quick expansion of the telehealth market, resulting in a surge of advanced solutions for digital healthcare all over the globe. Access to healthcare is reinvented and new care pathways - virtual and hybrid virtual/in-person - are created to improve healthcare access and health outcomes, while reducing costs. Yet challenges remain. The key objective of this paper is to determine the old and new technical trends that are disrupting access to healthcare and analyze the consumer and provider willingness to use telehealth services. We develop our research based on an innovative approach using mixed methods, which combines statistical analysis together with a business case with field experiments. Therefore, the first part of the work will be based on a comparative study on the use of telemedicine tools pre, during and post Covid-19 pandemic and an in-depth analysis of the use of telehealth services to access healthcare from both a consumer and a provider side view. While the second part will represent different case studies enhancing the digital transformation journey of healthcare leaders around the world. The results of the study will help define new successful access to healthcare models, in order to achieve a seamless patient and physician experience and overcome security and logistical hurdles.