Suchergebnisse

This article investigates the theoretical and practical aspects of tax morale among households in European Union countries. The attitude of households on tax payment is assessed quantitatively by employing a dichotomous logit-probit regression analysis. The research is based on household-level data received from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study. Weak tax morale among European Union households is mainly determined by the perception of corruption, disrespect to one's own country and parliament. Additionally, a household's tax morale depends on age, gender, religiousness, level of income and education. Based on the findings of this article, a more precise policy guidance is presented.

The main objective of the present study is to analyze the European Union defense policy on the example of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). It will be possible thanks to a comprehensive analysis of individual PESCO projects, participating countries, determinants and perspectives for the development of defense policy. The main hypothesis of the article is that although the strongest military European Union countries, relying on PESCO, seek to expand defense cooperation, this cooperation has no visible impact on increasing their armed forces. The article contains information about the genesis of the European Union Security and Defense Policy and the legal basis of Permanent Structured Cooperation, as well as a detailed list of all PESCO projects with the countries participating in them. An analysis of the implementation of PESCO projects indicates that they are dependent on external factors. This study uses methods appropriate to the science of international relations. Its research tools include an analysis of the literature on the subject, documents, and statistical data.

Abstract
This paper attempts to test for inflation convergence in a sample of 24 European Union countries. To tackle this issue, first- and second-generation panel unit root and stationarity tests are employed so as to provide evidence of inflation convergence before and after the launch of the single currency, the euro. We also test for and then allow for cross-sectional dependence. In general, the findings reveal that conditional inflation convergence exists for all panels under study. The estimation of half lives shows that the evidence for faster speed of convergence applies for the new member states followed by the core countries and the old member states.
JEL classifications: C33, E3, F33
Keywords: Inflation Convergence, EU, Maastricht Criteria, Panel data

The study aims to determine whether the unexplained gender wage gap varies in the different sectors of the economy and to identify the possible causes of these differences. Firstly, we estimate average treatment effect on the individual sectors to identify the unexplained part of gender pay gap. To identify the possible causes of observed variability in unexplained gender wage differences, we use a linear regression model. Using European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data for 24 European Union (EU) members, we conclude that the unexplained gender pay gap in the individual sectors varies both within the individual EU countries and among the countries. The most important factors in explaining the differences in the gender pay gap among the individual sectors are ownership and the proportion of women in the sector. On the other hand, the proportion of female managers and the proportion of small companies are not statistically significant factors for the explanation of the variation in the sector-specific gender pay gaps. To the best of my knowledge, this study is the first to present fully comparable estimates of the unexplained sector-specific gender pay gap for the 24 EU countries and to identify the causes of the differences in the unexplained gender pay gap at the sectoral level.

Digitalization involves an increase in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in all areas of the economy and all domains of the functioning of a society. Technologies of this kind affect the level of competitiveness of economies. The aim of the article is to compare the levels of competitiveness of European Union countries in the field of information and communication technologies, on the basis of indices developed by international institutions.The European Commission, World Economic Forum and Eurostat databases were used for comparative analysis of economies. Synthetic indices, such as the 9th pillar of the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI Pillar 9), the European Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) and the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) were used to compare the levels of digitalization of the economies. The actual individual consumption (AIC) value was adopted as an indicator of the wealth of EU economies. Changes in single indices were analysed as follows: in the NRI in 2014–2016, in the GCI Pillar 9 in 2015–2017 and in the DESI in 2016–2018, while the multi-character classification of countries according to the three variables (the NRI, DESI and GCI Pillar 9) was performed for the year 2016. Ward's hierarchical method and non-hierarchical analysis of k-means clusters were used to this effect. The multiple regression model revealed relationships between the welfare level measured by the AIC and the level of digitalization. The NRI turned out to be the best predictor. The results of the analysis indicate that there are still differences between the 'old' and the 'new' EU countries in terms of the development of the ICT sector.

The present research performs the GDP per capita convergence analyses of Western Balkan (WB) countries to European Union (EU) countries. There are few testing convergence methods based on theoretical insights on the neoclassical model, however pairwise convergence method doesn't seem usually applied in the case of WB and EU countries. The test of convergence hypothesis in this research is based on the GDP per capita's data, constant 2017 international $ in PPP terms, made available by the World Bank. The pairwise convergence test suggested here can be considered as an extension of Webber and While (2003, 2004, 2009) methodology. The outcomes have been compared to Bernard, Durlauf (1995) and Pesaran (2006) methodology of the pairwise convergence, by adapting ADF time series tests of the stationarity. In conclusion, despite to the controversy of one pair case, the comparative process of both methods seems to be aligned. However, further investigation needs to be performed to confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of this suggestion.
Keywords: GDP per capita, pairwise convergence, Western Ballkan countries, methodology

Abstract

Background and Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to find the key drivers of Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) in the European Union (EU-28) countries from the aspect of country's global competitiveness: institutions, macroeconomic environment, infrastructure, higher education, market effectiveness, market size, technological readiness, innovation and business sophistication.

Methodology: This paper investigates global competitiveness of the EU-28 countries with the use of GCI in the periods 2014-2015 and 2017-2018. The correlation analysis and regression analysis are applied for testing the set two hypotheses.

Results: The empirical results confirmed our hypotheses that GCI is particularly significantly positively correlated with innovation and business sophistication, and universities-industry collaboration in researches, and clusters development.

Conclusion: The paper contributes to the literature of global competitiveness, by examining the relationship of sub-indexes of competitiveness of the EU-28 countries, pointing out the influence of universities-industries collaboration in researches and cluster development with geographic concentration of companies. The results and findings can be relevant for science, economic and research policy, and managerial practices that enhance innovation and business sophistication for research in collaboration of companies, universities, higher education institutions, and decision makers. The implications of this study can be important for better understanding of drivers of the EU-28 countries global competitiveness.

This paper analyses the impact of education level and civic income on tax evasion. Tax evasion is an illegal attempt to deliberately avoid paying taxes by individuals, companies, corporations, funds and other institutions. There is a certain amount of research on this issue in the world academic literature, but a scarce number of studies dedicated to the countries of the European Union (EU) is noticeable. Therefore, for the authors of the research, this fact was the basic motivational source. A sample of nine EU countries was selected for the sample: Malta, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. The TAX criteria for selecting the countries in the sample were EU membership, geopolitical position and business culture. Eurostat macro data on the net income of the working population, the share of the working population by level of education and tax evasion costs for EU countries were used. The econometric method was used in the research. In order to analyse the impact of education and net income on tax evasion, a regression model was set up. Based on the results for the case of tertiary educated, a set of two predictor variables explains 60.4% of the tax evasion variability. The remaining 39.6% could be attributed to other variables that were not included in the model. Based on the statistical significance, the variable "tertiary education" has a contribution to tax evasion. If tertiary education jumps by one point, tax evasion falls by -6.263. The contribution of the variable "income of tertiary educated" exists, but is not statistically significant, so it cannot be taken into account. In the case of low-educated citizens, the value of R2, as well as education contribution and income impact, are not statistically significant, so they cannot be taken into account. When the results of our research were compared with similar research conducted outside the EU, certain differences were noticeable. While our research found an unequivocal impact of tertiary education on reducing tax evasion, in surveys that targeted countries outside the EU (McGee, 2012), it was concluded that wealthier citizens were generally more educated but also were taxed higher by the state. Therefore, they tend to view tax evasion as a positive behaviour. Also, the results of the Honk Kong study (Kwok and Yip, 2018) shown that the positive effect of tax education, in the form of non-academic courses, on tax compliance is weaker for postgraduates than undergraduates. Contradictory results can be explained by a different business culture of EU states comparing to non-European countries.

Monetary transmission mechanism is the mechanism which shows in what ways and what extent interaction between the real economy-monetary policy, impacts aggregate demand and production. While transmission channels or mechanisms traditionally classified they divided into three categories; interest rates, Exchange rates and other asset prices.In this study to test the existence of the European debt crisis by the monetary transmission mechanism, 15 members of European Union country by using annual (2002-2014) data set were included into study. We use panel unit root tests to analyze whether the variables in the model are stationary or not. For the countries included in the study, panel causality tests developed by Granger is applied. Panel Vector Autoregressive Model has been estimated and results of Impulse-Response Analysis and Variance Decomposition have been interpreted.

The primary aim of the presented study was to identify how selected factors determining gender-based inequalities affected the volume of the unadjusted pay gap among employees hired in the European Union after the 2007 crisis compared to the pre-crisis situation.An additional purpose of the study was to indicate changes in the employment rates of men and women, as well as changes in the pay gap between the two sexes (measured by means of the gender pay gap index – GPG), which became noticeable in the EU countries after the crisis, as compared to the pre-crisis period. The study was conducted using single-equation descriptive econometric models describing the wage gap. The analysis was based on the results of the Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS), both published by Eurostat. Due to data availability issues, data for 2006 were assumed to be representative for the situation prior to the crisis (the study took into account also countries which became member states in later years), while data covering the year 2012 (employment rate) and the years 2014–2018 (GPG) were assumed as representative for the post-crisis period. The analyses of the male and female employment rate and gender pay gaps indicate that following the crisis, the employment in the 24 EU countries became increasingly 'feminised', while no significant reduction of the pay gap was observed in the years 2006–2018. The obtained results indicate that greater 'feminisation' of employment is connected with greater gender pay gaps. A similar correlation occurs in relation to the professional activisation rate. In addition, significant differences are observed in terms of the impact some of the analysed factors have on the volume of the gender wage gap in different age and occupational groups.

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to identify the directions and instruments of state aid (with the exception of agriculture and the transport sector) used in Poland and to identify their specificities in relation to other countries of the European Union. Research method – The achievement of the above purpose required the use of research methods such as the analysis of legal acts, the collection and analysis of secondary data and the processing of the collected factual material using descriptive statistical methods. The data source was The State Aid Scoreboard, together with a variety of reports from the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection. Results – In 2017, the amount of state aid in Poland was twice as high as the average indicator in the European Union (1.51% and 0.76% respectively). Regional development (27.3%) was the main beneficiary of its allocation, while environmental protection was 55.4% in the EU. A specific feature of state aid in Poland is its sustainability, which does not exist to a similar extent in other Member States. Originality /value – According to the author's knowledge, this is one of the unique research papers devoted to the problem of state aid, especially in the context of the indication of the specific characteristics of state aid in Poland against the background of the countries of the European Union.