Terrorism is widely regarded as a public bad vis-à-vis security - a public good - affecting the subjective well-being of citizens. As studies have shown, citizens' risk-perceptions and risk-assessment are affected by large scale terrorist acts. Reported evidence shows that individuals are often willing to trade-off civil liberties for enhanced security particularly as a post-terrorist attack reaction as well as adopting more conservative views. Within this strand of the literature, this paper examines whether terrorism and in particular mass-casualty terrorist attacks affect citizens' political selfplacement on the left-right scale of the political spectrum. To this effect the Eurobarometer Surveys for twelve European Union countries are utilised and Ordered Probit models are employed for the period 1985-2010 with over 230 thousand observations used in the estimations. On balance, the findings reported herein seem to be pointing to a shift in respondents' self-positioning towards the right of the political spectrum.
The improvement of people's quality of life is currently considered as the main respon-sibility of every government. Due to the emergence of knowledge-based economy, it is commonly believed that investments in research and development (R&D) at a given level are a necessary condition for creating growth-based on innovations, thus support-ing welfare in developed countries. In this context, the article is devoted to the analysis of influence of R&D expenditures on the quality of life in the European Union coun-tries. As the main measure of the quality of life Human Development Index was uti-lized. Thus, the article can be considered as a contribution to the discussion on the po-tential of HDI index for measuring the quality of life in the case of narrow group of relatively developed countries. In the empirical part of the paper, panel data modeling fulfilling the postulates of dynamic estimation was used. The research was done for EU countries for the period 2004-2010. The empirical part takes into consideration the structural diversity between "old" and "new" members of the EU. First of all, the results can be treated as a voice confirming the usefulness of HDI as a measure of quality of life also from the perspective of narrow group of highly developed countries. Then, the research confirms the positive influence of R&D on European welfare only in the case of highly developed "old member".
Multidimensional crisis phenomena (financial–economic, environmental and social), plaguing the international community, especially in the last 30 years, have intensified resentment towards traditional models of growth and socio-economic development. The European Commission has placed the idea of a green economy (GE) at the heart of the Europe 2020 strategy. This paper presents an assessment of the implementation of the green economy assumptions in EU countries in 2018, taking 2010 as the base year. Using taxonomic methods, a synthetic evaluation index (GEI—Green Economy Index) was constructed based on a multi-criterion set of 27 indicators. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: How green are the European economies? What are the main challenges in this context? The average value of the index for the EU countries decreased in the studied years from 0.3423 to 0.3294, which can be interpreted as a slowdown in the greening processes. The key recommendations for the upcoming years include the improvement of energy efficiency indicators, the further increase in the share of renewable energy sources in the energy balance. Moreover, a significant problem continues to be the high percentage of the population at risk of poverty or social exclusion, as well as low CO2 and resource productivity rates.
At present, the state of the economy of the agricultural sector in many countries of the world, including in the countries of the European Union (EU), inherent in developed industry, has led to the transition to a new environmentally oriented agricultural policy. An important role is assigned to state support of agricultural producers, through subsidies, preferential credit policy, and in some countries, the complete abolition of taxation of entrepreneurial activity in rural areas, which confirms the relevance and national economic significance of the article. In domestic agroeconomic science and practice, there is no scientific concept of state participation in the process of bringing the agricultural sector out of the crisis. Research objectives – consider the development policy of the agricultural sector of the EU countries; study the level of state support for agricultural producers. The purpose of the work is to consider the degree of development of the agricultural policy of the EU countries in the context of ensuring food security. The methods and methodology of the research were general scientific, particular methods of cognition, including the historical and logical, the method of observation and comparison. Shows the main approaches to state regulation of the development of the agro-industrial sector at the level of the European Union as a whole and in the context of member countries; characteristic features and principles that determine the success and integrity of a unified agricultural policy; factors contributing to the productivity of agricultural land; agro-ecological requirements restricting the import of genetically modified products; the main tasks in the development of a new policy of the agrarian sector of the economy; priority directions of regulation of measures to support agricultural producers, integrated development of rural areas, increasing the competitiveness of the EU agricultural sector. The practical significance of the work lies in the fact that this study will allow the state bodies of Belarus to better understand how it is necessary to form an agricultural policy in the context of ensuring food security.
European Union (EU) due to several challenges that exist nowadays has changed its Energy Policy. In order tofulfill international commitments concerning greenhouse gas emission and to assure safety in supply and stableprices, EU has been a leader in renewable energy. In many EU countries solar energy is a possible and veryviable option. Together with wind energy, photovoltaic energy is the new support core of a low carbon EUeconomy in what concerns electricity production. In this work clusters of countries were generated based on theenergy produced by PV systems and the share of energy from PV systems in the total electricity produced byrenewable sources. This work also analyzed the production of energy from the photovoltaic sector in EU andcompared it with the existing potential for this type of energy. Roughly half of the EU countries are producingenergy within the limits of what is expected, considering the irradiation on optimally inclined plane. Howeversome of them could improve the ratio between energy production and installed power. Considering the leadercountries in energy production from photovoltaic, Czech Republic and Spain are the countries that exceed whatit is expected. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
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 provides the analysis of theoretical approaches to the concept of security in the European Union integration processes. Methodological bases for development of the concept of security of the European Union integration processes based on two paradigms of activity are offered. The first one provides institutional and financial autonomy in defense and peacekeeping; the second one involves the delegation of most security powers and the collective security of the Commonwealth. The main stages of building the European security and defense policy in the context of new threats to regional and global security are analyzed. The following tasks have been identified as the priority areas for further development of the EU: consensus decision making in all areas of the common security and defense policy; development of a new methodology for responding to threats; effective use of opportunities for international cooperation.
The paper presents the results of two research studies carried out in 2003 and 2010 regarding the perception of Polish students on their employment opportunities in European Union. The results show some hope that the scale of young Polish people emigration for economic reasons will decrease; this is considered a positive phenomenon taking into consideration the development potential and the needs of the Polish economy.
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
Energy efficiency is one of the most effective methods of fighting climate change, achieving supply security and succeeding in resource effectiveness. For this reason, European Union (EU) countries follow mutual energy policies related to energy efficiency, with directives of the European Commission. This study used the Malmquist Total Factor Productivity Index to determine the extent to which 28 EU countries used energy efficiently in the output (GDP) production process in the period of 2005-2017. The results of the analysis indicated that the energy efficiency of EU-28 countries increased by an average of 1.1% for the period under review, and that the increases in efficiency varied between countries. Also, energy efficiency decreased only in Poland throughout the studied period. Although the Union has a common energy policy, it is thought that there are two main reasons for the energy efficiency differences in the member countries of the Union. The first of these is the energy structures of the countries, while the second is the energy policies of the countries that are shaped by their own internal dynamics.
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 ...
This introductory essay briefly summarizes the 11 empirical studies of price setting and price adjustment that are included in this special issue. The studies, which use data from several European countries, were conducted as part of the European Central Bank's Inflation Persistence Network.
Introduction. Developed countries began to digitize their national economies resulting in transformation of human capital with digital and information technologies by making new demands on education. Transformational changes in the conditions of the world society development in the context of globalization put forward the need to reform the system of training, retraining and advanced training, as well as to promote the development of human capital creative abilities in accordance with the needs of the digital economy.The purpose of the study is to provide a scientific bases for the definition of the «digital economy» concept and to distinguish its key components, to outline the digitalization features and identify «digital gaps» in the EU countries using the Index of Digital Economy and Society (DESI).Methods. According to the purpose of the study, modern scientific methods of cognition were used, in particular: general scientific research methods (logical analysis, theoretical grounding, ascent from abstract to concrete, formalization and generalization), as well as the method of statistical observation.Results. The article presents the author's views on the interpretation of the "digital economy" concept which allowed detailing the individual properties and structural elements of the digital economy. Based on the research by the Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD), three main components of the digital economy are presented. The infrastructure of the digital economy is identified with market and planning approaches. Using the DESI Index on the example of EU countries, an analysis of five key components was performed, including communications, human capital, the Internet use, integration of digital technologies and digital public services. The current state of digital economy in the EU countries was also presented. The author emphasizes the importance of governments role and their prudent policy to motivate the population to use digital and information technologies, to increase awareness in this area and the overall level of country digitalization.Discussion. The success of the country in the digital economy development will further depend on the national digital and information capabilities, the development of internal infrastructure, the readiness of society for transformational changes, dictated by globalization. The necessary legal framework of the digital economy, balanced state strategies for IT development, formation of the potential for professional skills development and basic ICT literacy, as well as professional career in the information field will result in positive changes in national economies under context of digitalization.Perspectives. Prospects for further research include the need for statistical analysis of the digital economy key components in the regional context of the world countries, actions ranking and sequencing in the theoretical and methodological support of measures to enhance the use of digital and information products by countries.
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.