We combine panel household data with the introduction of an increasing block tariffs (IBT) for residential electricity in three experimental regions of Russia to analyze the relationship between the ...IBT and the propensity of households to purchase dirty fuels. Using a difference-in-differences empirical specification, we find that the propensity to purchase dirty fuels has increased in the regions where the IBT schemes were introduced. The size of the increase varies from 3.8 percentage points for the full sample of households to 13.4 percentage points when restricting the sample to households that do not have access to district heating networks.
Do women exhibit a different pattern of entrepreneurial behavior as compared to men in post-Communist societies? This paper addresses this question using survey data from 25 Eastern Europe and ...Central Asian states. The sample consists of 11,617 private firms. As a result of 11,000 observations and multiple robustness checks, we find that female owners are more likely to introduce new marketing strategies than males. We demonstrate that firm innovation increases among top female managers with the increase in democratization. Democratization eliminates the gender disadvantages in firm innovation for most types of firm innovation.
For most definitions, female leaders perform equally to males in firm innovation.
Female owners have a slightly higher tendency to introduce new marketing strategies than males.
Female top managers are less likely to invest in Research and Development as compared to male managers.
Firm innovation increases among top female managers with the increase in democratization.
Democratization eliminates the gender disadvantages in firm innovation for most types of innovation.
This paper examines the value relevance of ESG scores (environmental, social and governance) before, during, and after tumultuous economic periods (including the 2008 financial crisis and the ...COVID−19 pandemic) taking into consideration a company's financial performance. The analysis, using Ohlson's price model, is based on a sample of companies listed on European stock exchanges from 2003 to 2021. The results underline that, after each tumultuous economic period, there was a decline in the value relevance of ESG scores and an increase in investor focus on company financial performance.
This study aims to analyze how SMEs handle the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 crisis. We used a questionnaire-based survey and analysed the results based on descriptive and inferential ...quantitative methods. Following the processing and interpretation of the data collected, we note, the importance of the government measures in order to support SMEs to ensure the economy's functioning as close as possible to the normal state. Limited access to liquidity, lack of strong state support, poorly prepared and motivated human resources, low digitalization are the weaknesses of SMEs are the main obstacles to resilience in this crisis.
We employ the conceptual framework of "N-tuple helices" and devise a composite indicator, namely SFIGA (Society-Finance-Industry-Government-Academia), that aims at measuring the innovation ...performance of 24 OECD European countries from 2008 to 2017. We also investigate the effects of actors-helices on GDP per capita. The preliminary results from panel data regressions (OLS, quantile, and GMM) indicate their decisive economic importance as key actors of national innovation systems. However, the negative impact of academia on economic growth may explain a highly required resource allocation for basic research in the "knowledge economy" era. Its potential positive economic effects probably require time and patience.
This paper analyzes post-socialist industrial development and policy in the Western Balkans through the lens of its regional specialization and spatial concentration. Against a conceptual framework ...revolving around place-based industrial policy, and using the Concentration index (modified Herfindahl-Hirschman index) and location coefficients (Balassa index), a comparative analysis over three decades (1990-2020) highlights weak regional diversification and intra-regional integration of industrial activity. The findings offer a new industrial policy that transcends regional specialization and spatial concentration to address regional development, planning and governance. The concluding remarks reveal some basic paths toward effective and pro-European regional industrial policy in the Western Balkans.
Research has highlighted agriculture's contribution to the Romanian bioeconomy growth at the level of each territorial administrative region (NUTS 2). This paper analyzes the relevant socio-economic ...indicators of the bioeconomy in Romania's regions. We use Eurostat and the National Institute of Statistics from Romania (NIS) database for selected indicators. Cluster analysis using the SPSS software was chosen as a research method. Results revealed disparities between development regions. The article concludes that regional policies and investments from government and private firms have an essential role in developing agriculture and the bioeconomy.
This study uses the theory of social learning to investigate the relationship between hedonic and utilitarian motivation and e-commerce online shopping intentions. Based on a literature review, four ...hypotheses and eight sub-hypotheses are proposed. The study's novelty derives from the study region and the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results indicate a correlation between utilitarian and hedonic motivation and online shopping intentions, while information searching is a significant predictor of online purchase intentions. This paper contributes to both the academic and practical fields, and e-vendors can use it as a framework to manage website activity.
We analyze the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on emerging market real exchange rates using a Behavioral Equilibrium Exchange Rate approach augmented by pandemic variables. We show that behavioral ...factors related to Covid-19 played a significant role in explaining the behavior of emerging market real exchange rates during the first wave of the pandemic. The real exchange rates were driven by the number of new Covid-19 deaths rather than by the number of new infections. These results are robust for different country samples.
This paper evaluates the impact of the Slovak job retention scheme introduced in 2020 on dismissals and survival of small firms during the COVID-19 pandemic. We exploit exogenous variation in ...epidemic intensity, measured as new COVID-19 cases within a district per month. We show that the sensitivity of dismissals to the intensifying epidemic among unsupported firms was low, i.e. these firms were relatively unaffected by the shock. In contrast, participation in the job retention scheme reduced the sensitivity of firm dismissals to the intensification of the epidemic, preserving endangered jobs. Supported firms benefited by roughly the same amount, regardless of their management quality.
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