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In the 1970s Islamic financial system based on religious belief emerged in some of Muslim countries. The purpose of the Islamic financial system is just like in the case of the conventional one, to facilitate the smooth flow of funds between savers and investors. However, what is distinguishable about the Islamic financial system is that it is based on principles of sharia, which is a religious law of Muslims. With the share of around 80% in total assets of Islamic financial institutions, Islamic banks play a dominant role in the Islamic financial industry. They operate in over 75 countries, not only Muslim ones, but also those, where Muslim minority live. The aim of the paper is to analyse the opportunities and challenges for development of Islamic banking in the European Union countries. The analysis should give an answer to the question whether Islamic banks can have more significant presence in the European financial market in the future, than they have today. The article consists of four parts, not counting introduction and concluding remarks. The first part of the paper is a descriptive analysis of the main principles of sharia, which have impact on operations of Islamic banks. They include: prohibition of interest (riba), avoidance of uncertainty (gharar) and prohibition of trading in illegal (haram) products. Because of the necessity to comply with those principles, the instruments offered by Islamic banks must be constructed differently than conventional ones. Islamic financial instruments are briefly described in the second part of the paper. In the third section of the article the evolution and the current state of Islamic banking in the EU countries is presented. The main focus is put on the United Kingdom, since in this country Islamic banking sector is the most developed. In the fourth part prospects for development of Islamic banking in the EU are discussed. First the factors that should contribute to the development are presented. Then challenges faced by Islamic banking industry in the EU are ...

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine Okun's Law in European countries by distinguishing between the transitory and the permanent effects of output changes upon unemployment and by examining the effect of labor market protection policies upon Okun's coefficients.


Design/methodology/approach
– Quarterly data for 13 European Union countries, from the second quarter of 1993 until the first quarter of 2014, are used. Panel data techniques and Mundlak decomposition models are estimated.


Findings
– Okun's Law is robust to alternative specifications. The effect of output changes to unemployment rates is weaker for countries with increased labor market protection expenditures and it is more persistent for countries with low labor market protection.


Originality/value
– The paper provides evidence that the permanent effect of output changes upon unemployment rates is quantitatively larger than the transitory impact. In addition, it provides evidence that increased labor market protection mitigates the adverse effects of a decrease in output growth rate upon unemployment.

The European Union (EU) is a political and economic union of democratic European countries. One of his goals was and is to equalize living conditions in all countries. Unfortunately, it is not. Today, still, there are clear disparities both economic and social. It is worth a closer look, how does the situation in the UE at the national level. The aim of this study is to analyze the most current size selected macroeconomic and social at the EU member states to show that, despite the common policy of these countries are different.

This article investigates the competitiveness of agri-food exports of the European Union (EU-27) countries on global markets, using the revealed comparative advantage (B) index over the years 2000-11. Panel unit root tests, mobility index and the Kaplan-Meier survival rates of the B index are used. The majority of agri-food products in the EU-27 countries show a comparative disadvantage on global markets. The B indices of the EU-27 countries tend to convergence. Most of the old EU-15 Member States experienced a greater number of agri-food products having a longer duration of revealed comparative advantages than have most of the new EU-12 Member States. Among the most successful Member States in agri-food export competitiveness on global markets are the Netherlands, France and Spain. Adapted from the source document.

Introduction: 'Health' is an identifiable theme within the European Union multi-annual research programmes. Public Health Innovation and Research in Europe (PHIRE), led by the European Public Health Association, sought to identify public health research strategies in EU member states. Methods: Within PHIRE, national public health associations reviewed structures for health research, held stakeholder workshops and produced reports. This information, supplemented by further web searches, including using assisted translation, was analysed for national research strategies and health research strategies. Results: All countries described general research strategies, outlining organizational and capacity objectives. Thematic fields, including health, are mentioned in some strategies. A health research strategy was identified for 15 EU countries and not for 12. Ministries of health led research strategies for nine countries. Public health research was identified in only three strategies. National research strategies did not refer to the European Union's health research programme. Conclusions: Public health research strategies of European countries need to be developed by ministries of health, working with the research community to achieve the European Research Area. ; PHIRE received co-funding from the European Union Health Programme, agreement no. 2009 12 ...

A dissertation submitted to the School of Production Engineering and Management at the Technical University of Crete in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ; Summarization: The aim of this thesis is the evaluation of energy efficiency in EU countries and industrial sectors over the period 2000-10 and 2000-09, respectively. In the first stage of analysis in which the energy efficiency in 26 EU countries is evaluated, we follow a two-stage approach based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Multicriteria Decision Aiding approach (MCDA). The proposed two-stage DEA/MCDA approach can be easily used for benchmarking purposes, allowing for the formulation of a complete ranking of all countries under consideration, as well as the monitoring of the performance of a country over time using data solely at the country level, without having to resort to relative assessments in comparison to data from a set of peer countries. The results of the empirical analysis indicate that despite the considerable improvements achieved in terms of energy intensity, a more refined view of energy consumption and economic activity data shows that there is still much to be done to improve the actual energy efficiency of European countries. Additionally, the economic crisis of the past few years has had negative effects on energy efficiency. Furthermore, it is has been found that for European countries, the effect due to the consideration of the structure of their economic activity is stronger than the effect due to the introduction of a breakdown by their energy mix. Next, we extend our research to evaluating the energy efficiency trends of ten energy-intensive industries in 23 EU countries. Specifically, the performance of the construction, electricity, mining and quarrying, transport, food and tobacco, textiles and leather, pulp and paper, coke and chemicals, other non-metallic mineral and fabricated metal, machinery and equipment is examined. In the first stage, the DEA combined with the ...

The authors of the article analyze the effect of corruption on foreign direct investments in most corrupt European Union countries. Corruption in the context of the analysis is understood as an act where government officials enter into an agreement with a foreign investors against the interest of society. It takes place when illegal payments for government are made. Such payments acts as an additional tax on investments in foreign country, thus decreasing attractiveness of investment for foreign investors. There are various types of corruption, but most common classification includegrandcorruption,pettycorruption and public sector corruption. However, this article focuses on the effect ofgrandcorruption, because it directly affectsFDIinflows in particular country. Results of the research made by the authors shows that corruption has adverse effect onFDIinflows, however particular corrupt actions may postively effectFDIinflows. In order to determine corruption effect onFDIin corrupt EU countries statistical analysis of 2000–2014 period has been implemented and conceptual model of effect onFDIcreated.

The authors of the article analyze the effect of corruption on foreign direct investments in most corrupt European Union countries. Corruption in the context of the analysis is understood as an act where government officials enter into an agreement with a foreign investors against the interest of society. It takes place when illegal payments for government are made. Such payments acts as an additional tax on investments in foreign country, thus decreasing attractiveness of investment for foreign investors. There are various types of corruption, but most common classification includegrandcorruption,pettycorruption and public sector corruption. However, this article focuses on the effect ofgrandcorruption, because it directly affectsFDIinflows in particular country. Results of the research made by the authors shows that corruption has adverse effect onFDIinflows, however particular corrupt actions may postively effectFDIinflows. In order to determine corruption effect onFDIin corrupt EU countries statistical analysis of 2000–2014 period has been implemented and conceptual model of effect onFDIcreated.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate socio-economic inequalities in the use, accessibility and satisfaction with health services amongst 60-84 year old people from seven European urban communities. Design/methodology/approach Data for this study were collected in 2009. The target population was people aged 60-84 years from Stuttgart (Germany), Athens (Greece), Ancona (Italy), Kaunas (Lithuania), Porto (Portugal), Granada (Spain) and Stockholm (Sweden). The total sample comprised 4,467 respondents with a mean response rate across these countries of 45.2 per cent. Findings The study demonstrated that the majority of respondents had contact with a health care provider within the last 12 months. The highest percentages were reported by respondents from Spain (97.8 per cent) and Portugal (97.7 per cent). The results suggest that 13.0 per cent of respondents had refrained from seeking care services. The highest rates were amongst seniors from Lithuania (24.0 per cent), Germany (16.2 per cent) and Portugal (15.4 per cent). Logistic regression suggests that seniors who refrained from seeking health care was statistically significant associated with those with higher levels of education (odds ratios (OR)=1.21; 95 per cent confidence intervals (CI)=1.01-1.25) and financial strain (OR=1.26; 95 per cent CI=1.16-1.37). Furthermore, the majority of respondents were satisfied with health care services. Originality/value The findings from the "Elder Abuse: a multinational prevalence survey" study indicate the existence of significant variations in use, accessibility and satisfaction with health services by country and for socio-economic factors related to organizing and financing of care systems.

2nd International Conference on Computational and Experimental Science and Engineering (ICCESEN) -- OCT 14-19, 2015 -- Kemer, TURKEY ; WOS: 000384810700107 ; The class of generalized linear models is an extension of traditional linear models that allows the mean of the response variable to be linearly dependent on the explanatory variables through a link function. Generalized linear models allow the probability distribution of the response variable to be a member of an exponential family of distributions. The exponential family of distributions include many common discrete and continuous distributions such as normal, binomial, multinomial, negative binomial, Poisson, gamma, inverse Gaussian, etc. Also link functions can be built as identity, logit, probit, power, log, and complementary log-log link functions. In this study, supply, transformation and consumption, imports and exports of solid fuels, oil, gas, electricity, and renewable energy annual data of European Union countries between 2005 and 2013 years are investigated by using generalized linear models. In this case, the response variable is taken as annual complete energy balances of European Union countries as a continuous variable having positive values, and the distribution of the response variable comes from the gamma distribution with log-link function.

This paper examines economic and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development influence on recently increasing Internet purchases by individuals for European Union member states. After a growing trend for Internet purchases in EU27 was noticed, all possible regression analysis was applied using nine independent variables in 2011. Finally, two linear regression models were studied in detail. Conducted simple linear regression analysis confirmed the research hypothesis that the Internet purchases in analyzed EU countries is positively correlated with statistically significant variable Gross Domestic Product per capita (GDPpc). Also, analyzed multiple linear regression model with four regressors, showing ICT development level, indicates that ICT development is crucial for explaining the Internet purchases by individuals, confirming the research hypothesis.

The following article is a recent bibliographic review of supplementary healthcare policies in Brazil and EU. The main focus is analyzing healthcare policies for the private sector in Brazil, within the context of Brazil's Unified National Health System (SUS), with the profile of the private sector in European Union countries, which have long had public systems integrated with social security. Our work is based on research conducted in the second decade of the 21st century. It is our understanding that comparing positions and progress made by the private sector, the growth of private and copayment health insurance and consequently the shrinking of public healthcare systems allows us to better understand the reach and meaning of those changes. We will initially analyze healthcare policies of Europe's private sector. Then we will discuss the supplementary healthcare system in Brazil, which is the main goal of this paper. Finally, we will compare cases according to progress and delays in private and public healthcare systems.

Tourism is one of the most rapidly blossoming sectors of economy and its economic and social signi fi cance is expressed both in numbers (share in GNP, employment) and in a range of as important uncountable characteristics like expansion of a region, more intense development, building the spirit of local communities, actions preventing social exclusion or education of future generations for state progress. A number of countries, provinces and regions have achieved well- rounded social and economic growth by developing tourist economies and a range of necessary supporting measures, including complementary infrastructure, active and well-educated society by organising adequate living standards and ful fi lling basic social requirements, etc. It is therefore important to determine factors that improve competitiveness of tourism to maximum extent. The objective of this paper is to evaluate dependences between competitiveness of the European Union member states and selected factors determining competitiveness of tourism in these states. A set of factors determining competitiveness of tourism is introduced, that is, capacity of tourist accommodation establishments, arrivals at tourist accommodation establishments, average expenditure of tourism trips (1 night or over) – domestic trips, average expenditure of tourism trips (1 night or over) – outbound trips, tourism domestic trips (1 night or over), tourism outbound trips (1 night or over) and their impact on levels of competitiveness is determined. Considerable geographical variation of availability of accommodation establishments in the European Union member states and high, statistically signi fi cance correlations between availability of accommodation establishments and numbers of tourists arriving in a given states and between competitiveness of the EU states and tourism expenditure are identi fi ed.

The study intends to analyze how the shift to inspiring leadership in EU modern organizations reflects in the preferred leadership among employees from post-soviet Baltic countries: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The main research question investigates employees' perception of an ideal leader in developing EU countries. This perception is important for the employees' work performance and sustainable economic growth. The study intends to compare Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian employees' preferences for leader's traditional roles (task-oriented behavior and relations-oriented behavior) and modern "more emotional and inspiring" views (charisma and social responsibility). 221 employees participated in the cross-sectional quantitative survey with self-administered internet based questionnaires. 124 Lithuanians, 40 Latvians, 57 Estonians filled in the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Leadership Behaviors (Yukl, 2012), Transformational Leadership Inventory (Podsakoff et al., 1996) and a scale from Servant Leadership Questionnaire (Barbuto, Wheeler, 2006) was used. Results of this study suggest that charisma is the most preferred characteristic of a leader. Relations-oriented behavior is also a significant factor in predicting an ideal leadership. Employees do not perceive task-oriented behavior and leader's social responsibility as essential dimensions for an ideal leadership. Some significant differences in leadership preferences are revealed among countries. The study is based on under-estimated follower-centric perspective and examines interactive predictive value of different leadership dimensions to employees' preferences. Data reveals that the shift to inspiring leadership have already occurred in the perception of employees from post-soviet Baltic countries. The comparison of three Baltic countries gives the insight about the challenges for management in still developing EU members ; Psichologijos katedra ; Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas