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In the wake of the recent trend in governments stepping back from performing administrative duties aiming at improving service quality of citizens, Albania has witnessed a rapid growth in the Private – Public Partnerships (PPP). The ever growing confrontation of the government with the challenge to improve infrastructure and public facility planning grows proportionally with the increase in demand from the population as well as the need for enhancing existing infrastructure and public facilities, which suffer from delayed maintenance interventions.One of the distinguishing features of the latest developments in Albania is the boost in the number of PPP arrangements completed and in progress, aimed at meeting different infrastructure objectives, efficient mining exploitation, construction of Hydroelectric power plants and various public facility centers offering an array of public services etc. The PPP arrangements take a number of forms depending on the degree of involvement in the private sector and according to the methods used for their implementation.In this paper we are going to focus only on the accounting and financial reporting aspect of these issues, from the prospective of the public sector entity, i.e. the offer, by giving limited consideration to the operators of these agreements due to the fact that the accounting treatment and the respective financial reporting for Service Concession Agreements for private operators are covered by IFRIC 12 of the Interpretations committee for the International Financial Reporting Standards on "Service Concession Arrangements". DOI:10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s2p117

International financial crisis of the last decade had a negative influence in almost all banking system of the world. The difficulties on managing problems brought into consideration that the balance of risk exposure versus return is very difficult to be controlled. Managers of the businesses are working hard to meet liquidity needs and to continue their business which is greatly supported by financial intermediaries. On the other side, banks and their regulators are following risk problems with increased management measures, as stability of financial system was undermined seriously from financial crisis and structural problems in all countries. There are several risks that all kind of businesses are exposed, but in this paper we are focused to credit risk in the banking system, which is counted as 60-70% of total risk exposure. Recently the Albanian economy is having low growth with the banking system suffering from the increase of non- performing loans (NPL). This reflects liquidity and performance problems for businesses with increased risk on financial stability. This paper deals with proof of macroeconomic factors that influence NPL rate for Albania. Verification of these factors can support the proper policies that reduce the NPL level. The analysis includes the comparison of Albanian and Italian data on the trends and factors that affect NPL rate. Albanian Central Bank and government are trying to apply prudent regulations based on analysis of factors driving bad performance. The analysis and findings of this paper is based on existing literature that is applied with a regression model. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n1p391

Among scholars, there is an interest in understanding how entrepreneurial behavior is influenced by the consequences of crises. The COVID-19 pandemic may negatively or positively affect individuals' behavior, including entrepreneurial intention. Thus, this paper seeks to study whether or not the economic shock caused by the pandemic reinforces the intention to start a business. The research was administered at the individual level by distributing a structured survey. The hypotheses were developed based on a unique conceptual framework integrating the planned behavior theory and a stimulus–organism–response perspective. The relationships were tested using the structural equation modeling method with an original dataset of more than 800 respondents from three post-communist transition countries. The results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic, seen as an opportunity, positively influences both the antecedents of entrepreneurial intention and individuals' intention to start a business. The message that these findings convey is that, even in crises, there are opportunities from which one can benefit, including the individual's propensity to engage in startup activities. By examining the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on entrepreneurial behavior, educational institutions and policymakers can design effective policies to foster entrepreneurship and reduce unemployment, particularly among the youth.

During the last two decades the process of decentralization has been extended worldwide. This process has taken place in developed countries but in nowadays, this process is also being applied in developing countries in order to challenge the monopoly of centralized decision making of governments. The decentralization reform in Albania has done progress during the transition period. Today the local governance in Albania is absorbing and implementing the decentralization legal framework which is approved up to now and also is moving toward a complicated but progressive process of decentralization and autonomy that combines the decentralization of functions/services with fiscal decentralization supported by the process of strengthening the local democracy and accountability through free election and local community participation. This practice is supported by the economic theory of decentralization that it is a process that can and should lead to the improvement of the services that citizens receive from government by balancing local needs and expectations regarding the quantity, quality, cost and mix of services. This paper makes a snapshot of the process of decentralization by evaluating what has already been achieved, what is in process and what are the challenges laid ahead. It does the analysis of fiscal decentralization and fiscal autonomy in Albania and also gives a short description about the European models (West and East European countries). This paper touches upon the main achievements and challenges on all the complex issues that relate to decentralization. It is mainly focused on the progress of decentralization during the last couple years. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n10p524

The influences of personality traits and business barriers on entrepreneurial behaviour have been studied by numerous researchers. However, the mechanisms by which changes in institutional contexts and personality traits affect individuals' entrepreneurial motivation have not received enough attention from researchers. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by examining the joint effects of personality traits and business barriers on one's motivation to engage in entrepreneurial activity. A structured questionnaire was developed to capture the above linkages. To measure the latent variables, factor and reliability analyses were utilised. To examine the relationships, a regression analysis was performed on a unique dataset of respondents from three counties: Czechia, Hungary, and Serbia. The results show that personality traits positively influence motivation towards entrepreneurship. Furthermore, external barriers (ecological and technological issues), and infrastructure factors positively affect entrepreneurial motivation. From an academic viewpoint, personality traits and motivation to engage in entrepreneurial activity can be nourished by education, highlighting the role of universities in this regard. Our paper's findings should trigger the interest of policymakers who aim to introduce new instruments or change the existing ones (designing policies) to boost entrepreneurship.