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Entrepreneurship is considered a significant determinant for the economic development of a country but is also important for new job creation and innovation. Understanding and examining the factors which affect the decision of individuals to become entrepreneurs play a significant role for the decision makers in order to identify the adequate measures that can support and develop the entrepreneurial activity. The main purpose of this paper is to identify the key factors that determine entrepreneurial motivations of individuals, but also to analyze empirically the impact of these factors for a sample of 18 countries members of the European Union, for a period between 2002 and 2015. We performed our empirical analysis using data offered by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and the World Bank. We used panel data regression models. As dependent variables for our econometric models, we used, alternatively, total entrepreneurial activity rate, necessity driven entrepreneurial activity, and opportunity-driven entrepreneurial activity. As regards the independent variables considered, we took into account six macroeconomic indicators and four indicators which measure the perceptions and attitudes regarding entrepreneurship. The results of the panel data regression models show that the entrepreneurial motivations are influenced by the level of economic development of a country and total tax rate (only necessity entrepreneurs), unemployment rates, inflation rates and access to financial resources. Also, all the considered perceptual indicators (fear of failure, entrepreneurial intentions, perceived capabilities, and opportunities) have a significant effect on entrepreneurship according to its motivation, but these effects differ according to the motivation of individuals. Overall, this paper emphasizes that the economic conditions from an EU country but also the perception of entrepreneurs are important determinants of entrepreneurial motivation.

This paper reassesses the long-debated relationship between the financial system development and economic growth. We use not only indicators for financial access, efficiency, stability and depth of the bank-oriented financial sector, but we also consider Eurozone membership, corruption perception and competitiveness of countries to examine the determinants of economic growth. We apply a panel data approach to 27 European countries over the 2004–2017 period. By splitting the time span, we examine whether the effect of financial system development, Eurozone membership, corruption perception and competitiveness on economic growth is affected by the occurrence of financial and debt crises. Our results indicate that loans to private sector do not always support economic growth. Our research also reveals that corruption perception has a negative impact on economic growth, and so does membership in Eurozone during a crisis.

Investing in green facilities is a process of urban renewal that can transform cities by enhancing the quality of life, strengthening the local economy and reducing the environmental impact. Nevertheless, greener cities are not a guarantee for improved adaptive capacity when facing current local or global challenges. In this context, we have taken into account a series of sample cities from Central and Eastern European Union. Using the green cities typology proposed by the European Environment Agency, the present approach studies the statistical relationship between indicators of green infrastructure and different proxies for the resilience capacity and performance. The results distinguish between different types of green cities, indicating which are more resilient and, respectively, which are less resilient. The statistical relationship between the indicators shows that green infrastructures are developed in new urban areas, while the natural areas diminish the flood risk and air pollution and make cities more attractive; however, in older and higher density cities, the green is sacrificed for other uses that are considered more profitable. The conclusions highlight the contradictory characteristics in the territorial distributions of cities in relation to their green infrastructure and resilience features. The present assessment contributes to promoting an integrated vision that could be used in urban planning and in more coherent strategies for sustainable cities.

There are still debates in the scientific literature about the factors influencing countries&rsquo ; sustainable socioeconomic development. Therefore, the current article aims at determining the factors of sustainable socioeconomic development and assessing its level in the EU countries. The following methods were employed for the research: an evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). EDAS was used to reveal which countries have the highest level of sustainable socioeconomic development, and which have the lowest. The ranking was done based on the appraisal score, which is an outcome of EDAS. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) was used for clustering the countries based on the appraisal scores in order to distinguish groups of countries having a similar level of sustainable socioeconomic development. The results revealed that the highest level of sustainable socioeconomic development is in Germany, and the lowest in Portugal. Based on HCA, the countries were divided into three groups. The first cluster&rsquo ; s countries have the weakest sustainable socioeconomic development, and countries assigned to the third cluster have the best. In the current research, the third cluster consists of one country, Germany, which supports the results obtained with the EDAS method, i.e., Germany is the country with the highest level of sustainable socioeconomic development in the EU.

The aim of the study is to verify the hypothesis of a tendency towards levelling of household income in the EU countries in the years 2007—2015. Convergence process of the level and the distribution of household disposable income was analysed. The basic source of information were Eurostat's data from EU-SILC database. The convergence analysis of income levels was carried out for the mean, median and first decile of annual equivalised household disposable incomes, weighted by country population. To examine their convergence, regression models used in economic convergence analyses were adapted and the concept of absolute ß convergence was used. In the study of income distributions convergence the income distribution in households by decile groups was used, and the degree of their discrepancy was assessed using the generalised form of the Jensen-Shannon divergence measure. The study was conducted for 27 EU countries, 15 of the old EU states and 12 new member states.
On the basis of the obtained results, it was concluded that there was no convergence of the distributions of income by quantiles. However, the convergence of the considered characteristics of income distributions (mean, median, first decile) was observed.

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 ...

Methods: Sickness absence was measured by questionnaire using the Third European Survey on Working Conditions. Employees were considered to have sickness absence if they reported to be absent at least one day in the past 12 months because of an accident at work, work related problems, or by other health problems.

This paper analyzes the impact of decentralization on overall fiscal performance in the European Union, taking into account fiscal institutional arrangements. We find that spending decentralization has been associated with sizably better fiscal performance, especially when transfer dependency of subnational governments is low. However, subnational fiscal rules do not seem to be associated with better performance

Abstract This article aims to analyze the school days in European Union countries, systematizing similarities and differences between education systems. The compared analysis involved fifteen member countries and focused on the descriptive and comparative phases of the classical comparative method. School days are socio-historical and cultural constructions, which result in sometimes convergent, sometimes divergent policies in the region. In general, the compulsory school day in European countries is from 5 to 6 hours per day. However, there are many features, including investment in policies that integrate curricular and extracurricular activities, as supervised socio-educational times. Through compared analysis, it was possible to identify perspectives and alternatives to the school day configuration to better answer to the demands and needs of the subjects of education.

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.