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The purpose of this paper is to provide an update on the development of the long‐term relative poverty rate in Europe. We use European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data (EU‐SILC) for 26 European countries between 2009 and 2018. In addition to describing the development of long‐term poverty, we also analyse the drivers of poverty on the country level via fixed effects panel regression analysis. We are particularly interested in how economic growth, employment rates, social expenditure, and short‐term poverty rates are related to long‐term poverty. Overall, the results show that long‐term poverty has increased in 13 out of 26 countries, but was unchanged or decreased in 13 countries. Gross domestic product growth is not related to the development of long‐term poverty. However, we find that male employment and social welfare expenditure reduce poverty rates. Furthermore, short‐term poverty is negatively associated with long‐term poverty. Hence, short‐term poverty and long‐term poverty rather substitute than complement each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a Polanyian frame to place the plight of Roma in Europe in the context of an age of crisis, as evidenced by faltering neoliberal economies and a corresponding rise in xenophobia and extreme manifestations of nationalism. The situation of the Roma remains precarious, a situation exacerbated by the 2008 economic crises and the COVID-pandemic. Despite a number of social inclusion measures in recent decades, at the national and European level which target the Roma, Roma exclusion remains a serious challenge. The paper assesses why previous policy regimes failed but also reflects on what is the way forward in terms of inclusive policy frameworks. The article seeks to provide some answers to these questions with a vision of a Polanyian countermovement in the form of a New Social Europe predicated on redistribution, recognition and community action but also a re-envisioning of integration and transformative change in structural and cultural terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radiology has not been spared in recent economic crises with a substantial reduction in the turnover of imaging equipment. These problems are exacerbated by increasing demand for healthcare across Europe. Therefore, using existing radiological services while rigorously following evidence-based guidelines might improve patient care. Thus, diagnostic pathways should be assessed not only for technical and diagnostic performance but also for their impact on medical and social outcome. In this paper, we report the advice of the Research Committee of ESSR on how we may guide musculoskeletal radiological research towards studies that have useful clinical impact. The ESSR Research Committee intends to encourage research with potential to influence treatment, patient outcome, and social impact. Key Points • Research in medical imaging has the potential to improve human health. • High-level studies have the potential to place radiology at the pinnacle of quality in evidence-based practice. • The ESSR Research Committee intends to encourage research with potential to influence treatment, patient outcome, and social impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Road is the dominant mode of transport, and most investment in road infrastructure is undertaken by governments. Fiscal policy considerations exert therefore a profound impact on the size and quality of road networks. To understand the observed steep downtrends and volatility in road infrastructure investment in Europe since the financial crisis, this paper presents long- and shorter-term panel data analyses of their determinants. The results suggest that investment in road infrastructure is used by governments as an instrument to address fiscal debt sustainability concerns and to smooth out swings in government debt. Investment in road infrastructure also competes with other types of government investment, with a high negative elasticity with respect to investment in health and education. These results are striking in light of the high social cost of congestion, accidents, and other related negative externalities, but their welfare implications are not straight-forward to infer, including as higher road infrastructure investment may only have a limited and variable impact on congestion due to induced travel demand. • Road infrastructure investment has plummeted in Europe since the financial crisis. • That downtrend reflects fiscal sustainability concerns. • Investment in roads also competes for funds against other government investment. • New road capacity alone will not resolve Europe's high congestion costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is an essential index to measure international dry bulk shipping freight, which can reflect global economic changes to a certain extent. Accurate forecasting of BDI supports shipping market participants in grasping risks and making scientific decisions. Based on the Prophet model, this paper considers the impact of multi-dimensional significant events related to the shipping industry and conducts BDI forecasting research. Firstly, we simulate the most momentous events in the world in recent years, namely the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and the 2019 New Crown Epidemic, and utilize the Prophet model to decompose the BDI sequence into three parts: trend, seasonality, and momentous event shocks. Secondly, we extensively collect other multi-dimensional significant event uncertainty indexes to establish a "significant event database". The Maximal Information Coefficient and Boruta methods were employed to extract the uncertainty index particularly correlated with BDI as an exogenous variable for forecasting. Then, we employ the K-Shape method to cluster exogenous variables and explore the combined sense of clustering. Finally, we utilize the Prophet model to forecast BDI in stages. It discusses the influence of exogenous variables and their cluster combinations on the forecasting effect individually and sequentially. Empirical results show that considering the two momentous events of the Financial Crisis and COVID-19 can remarkably improve the accuracy of BDI forecasting. In addition, the study of exogenous variable significance found that during the Financial Crisis, economic policy uncertainty in Europe and the Americas greatly impacted BDI forecasting. During COVID-19, global and developed economic policy uncertainty was noteworthy in the BDI forecasting. The comparative experimental results show the Prophet model has an exemplary forecasting result and strong robustness. It also performs excellently in model generalization and interpretability. This paper proposes a reliable and advanced algorithm for shipping freight rate index forecasting, which has noteworthy reference value for shipping market participants to make investment decisions and risk avoidance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at an understanding of acquisition processes in a strongly industrialized and export‐oriented economy in Central Europe. Drawing on a proximity framework and behaviour theory, the paper investigates that the geographical proximity dimension is more influential than the cognitive proximity dimension. At the same time, cognitive proximity matters more for foreign firms investing into the economy than for domestic acquisitions. While the role of cognitive proximity diminished during the economic crisis, geographical proximity keeps its importance throughout the economic cycle. Moreover, cognitive proximity has become more important for acquisitions of large companies and less for SMEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we assess the impact of the recent European recession on stillbirth indices over the course of the 2000s and 2010s; the analysis focuses on four Southern European countries (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal), which were seriously affected by the sovereign debt crisis from around 2008 to 2017. We use national vital statistics and established economic indicators for the period 2000–2017; stillbirth ratios (stillbirths per 1000 livebirths) are the chosen response variable. For the purpose of the study, we employ correlation analysis and fit regression models. The overall impact of economic indicators on the stillbirth indices is sizeable and statistically robust. We find that a healthy economy is associated with low and declining levels of stillbirth measures. In contrast, economic recession appears to have an adverse effect (Greece, Italy and Spain), or an unclear impact (Portugal), on the stillbirth outcome. This study provides evidence of the adverse effect of the European sovereign debt crisis and ensuing period of austerity on a scarcely explored aspect of health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial networks have been the object of intense quantitative analysis during the last few decades. Their structure and the dynamical processes on top of them are of utmost importance to understand the emergent collective behavior behind economic and financial crises. In this paper, we propose a stylized model to understand the "domino effect" of distress in client–supplier networks. We provide a theoretical analysis of the model, and we apply it to several synthetic networks and a real customer–supplier network, supplied by one of the largest banks in Europe. Besides, the proposed model allows us to investigate possible scenarios for the functioning of the financial distress propagation and to assess the economic health of the full network. The main novelty of this model is the combination of two stochastic terms: an additive noise, accounting by the capability of trading and paying obligations, and a multiplicative noise representing the variations of the market. Both parameters are crucial to determining the maximum default probability and the diffusion process characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many largest cities in southern Europe, urban tourism, and particularly the touristification of their central urban areas, have emerged as key mitigation strategies to overcome the negative socioeconomic effects derived from the last financial and economic crisis. While an increasing number of authors suggest a clear interaction between tourist gentrification and commercial gentrification, little scholar attention has been paid to the growing interrelation between the economy of nightlife, urban tourism and their complex forms of simultaneous interaction as fundamental driving forces of change in central areas of European cities. This article will expose the different theoretical and methodological challenges that the touristification of nightlife in central urban areas entails for the study of the tourist city. This paper will also argue that the touristification of nightlife emerges as one of the most aggressive forms of material, symbolic and heritage dispossession of local communities in the central historic neighborhoods of many European cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to study the patterns of mobility from Spain to other European countries that have emerged since the economic crisis of 2008. To do this, we have carried out an in-depth analysis of the main statistical sources on migration flows from Spain's National Statistics Institute. Based on this analysis we have developed a typology of the "new emigrants", including returnees, re-emigrants and Spanish-born migrants. However, the article shows that these mobilities do not only result from a new phenomenon, since there is a continuity with earlier Spanish migration cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current phase of intensive globalisation, digitisation, the expansion of fintech companies and the overall impacts of the recent crisis seem to spur further concentration in the banking sector in terms of both the number of banks in operation and the number of banking centres. This research is motivated by the fact that, in contrast to leading financial and banking centres that attract considerable research attention, small banking centres have remained under-researched, despite their large number and the important role they play in their host communities and regions. This paper deals with the recent evolutionary dynamics of 199 small European banking centres and is based on an analysis of the economic performance of individual banks aggregated at the city level where they have their headquarters. The analysed indicators cover size, profitability and the level of risk of particular banks over the 2004–2015 period. In addition, the data were analysed for three basic European macro-regions (western Europe, southern Europe and central and eastern Europe) and in terms of the ownership of the banks headquartered in particular centres (foreign versus domestic). Our investigation shows that, even though a significant decline has been observed in the number of these centres, the financial performance of banks headquartered in small financial centres differs widely, depending significantly upon the European macro-region (a decisive number of defunct banking centres was concentrated in southern Europe) and the ownership structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) shifts the focus from reacting in the face of a crisis, to planning and preparing to avoid uncoordinated, ad hoc measures and aims to ensure banks resolvability; it strengthens and harmonizes early intervention measures and gives supervisors new tools and powers for managing failing banks while continuing part of their business, i.e. critical functions. The BRRD was conceived out of a need to reduce public funds being used to bail out banks considered 'too big to fail' and strengthen cooperation and coordination between Member States. The first part of this paper sets out how key resolution decisions, including during recovery and resolution planning, are taken for cross-border banking groups within the EU, and within the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM) of the euro area. It also considers the impact of the BRRD on cooperation with third countries (small host countries). The second part of the paper offers a legal analysis of why no autonomous centralized decision-making powers were delegated to the Single Resolution Board (SRB). It considers whether legal judgements made in 1956 and enshrined as the ' Meroni doctrine' actually prohibit delegation of fully autonomous resolution powers to the SRB and more broadly prevent the creation of a centralized resolution agency for the whole EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides empirical evidence on the innovation performance in the European countries in the years of recovery from the global economic and financial crisis by using the CDM model of simultaneous equations. The model directly links R&D engagement and intensity to innovation outcomes measured either as process or as product innovation, and then estimates the effectiveness of the innovative efforts leading to productivity gains. The difference between the drivers of innovation systems and its influence over the productivity growth is analyzed between two different institutional settings in Europe. For that purpose a company-level dataset is used from the 2012 round of the Comunity Innovation Survey. Тhe results indicated that the recent financial crisis had negative influence on the companies' willingness to innovate. The effect of the crisis led to further divergence in the innovation systems of these two institutional settings. Identifying the characteristics of the innovation systems and drivers of innovation during the turmoil shows that policy instruments on EU level should be oriented towards creation of competitive business environment, encouragement to adopt the best management techniques and organizational structures and improvement of well-functioning capital, product and labor markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recovery from the recent financial crisis and "great recession" has been slower than after previous recessions in most developed countries and areas, especially Europe. But Europe's growth problem is structural in character and started much earlier. This paper analyzes the structural causes of the European slow growth, evaluates the policies that Europe adopted to overcome it, and concludes that even with the appropriate policies, the prospects for accelerating growth in Europe will be difficult, especially in the context of the current US-China trade war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic crisis has undoubtedly impacted welfare states through the austerity policies prioritised to purportedly lead economies back to a growth path. In this paper, we assess the effects of the crisis in those welfare states, focusing on income benefits and analysing cases of welfare state change before the crisis via gross replacement rates available through the OECD tax/benefits database. We begin with a literature review on impacts of the crisis on welfare states, then focus on our hypothesis that retrenchment trends were already in motion before the crisis. From our point of view, this is relevant to understanding the evolution of welfare states since 2001, particularly those effects attributable to the crisis (versus those that are not); this may also be of help in the prediction of future trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyse the main determinants of the propensity to NEET status in a selection of European countries. The NEET rate is the share of young people, aged between 19 and 30 years, not in Employment, Education or Training. In treating the 19–24 and 25–30 cohorts separately, our hypothesis is that for the younger cohort NEET status is mainly influenced by the school-to-work transition while for the older cohort this status is primarily due to labour market functioning and institutional factors. We apply different specifications of multilevel models with binary outcomes accounting for both personal and macro-economic factors which afford advantages over simple logit models. Estimates refer to 2007 and 2016 in order to verify how the economic crisis changed NEET status. The results confirm our hypothesis, highlighting the crucial role on the NEET propensity of the school-to-work transition in the first approach to the labour market, but also the strong influence of long-term unemployment, confirming the structural nature of the NEET phenomenon especially in countries where NEET levels remain high even during times of economic recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ageing is going to be greater and greater in the forthcoming decades. At the same time, old-aged dependency and longevity occur due to rising life expectancy at birth. Our study aims to examine the effect of population ageing on private savings. A panel data of a sample of selected European countries collected from the World Bank (WB, 2016) – World Development Indicators (WDI) database is used, in order to analyze possible heterogeneity across and multiple subsamples. The span period is 1990–2013. Besides, economic growth and crisis provide empirical support. Our findings show that longevity and dependency rates have both significant impacts on savings. However, the results are influenced by the way in which the data is managed. Therefore, this calls into question the practice of applying for a reform in the government's old-age support programs. Besides, the paper makes a good contribution to knowledge: firstly, it is innovative since it puts together demographic and economic variables among a selected group of developed countries; secondly, it uses a very up-to-dated database; and thirdly, it fills a gap in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the topic of European imbalances. They are defined as large and persistent differences in the current account position of European countries, which are closely connected to the emergence of the financial crisis and the subsequent sovereign debt crisis in 2008. A build-up in current account deficits had been observed from the mid-1990s, namely in two peripheral regions of the EU. However, little attention was paid to the potential differences between the Southern and Central European peripheries of the EU. The emergence of large and persistent current account deficits in Southern Europe was accompanied by a significant shift in gains from global value chains. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the factors that co-determined the changes in the geographic structure of GVCs in Europe. These changes decreased GVC income in Southern Europe, increased it in Central Europe and contributed to the build-up of account imbalances in Southern Europe. Despite the fact that Central Europe was among the deficit regions in European imbalances, the four Central European countries substantially increased their gains from global value chains as well as GVC participation. The shift in GVC activity towards Central Europe between 1995 and 2011 was driven not only by total labour costs but also by better regulatory quality. At the same time, TNCs switching from Southern to Central Europe had to accept worse quality contract enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The knowledge of the link between interbank financing and business cycle fluctuations is important in assessing the stability and soundness of the banking sector. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the simultaneous relationship between interbank financing and the business cycle with respect to the financial structure of the bank-based and market-based systems in European countries by using bank-level data from 2007 to 2011. Design/methodology/approach: The study employs an innovative instrumenting technique with an instrument of the financial structure to address the simultaneous determination of interbank financing and the business cycle. Findings: The results suggest that banks establish pro-cyclical interbank borrowing by increasing their interbank position during booms and reducing it during downturns. Bank-based system performs better in redistributing the liquidity in the economy than the market-based system when there are imperfectly correlated liquidity shocks across regions during the 2007–2009 financial crisis. Practical implications: The improvement of banks' liquidity risk management should be aligned with a specific financial system. The macro-prudential supervisor should require banks in the market-based system to disclose their interbank position on the extent of risk exposure during the liquidity shock period to stabilize the EU banking industry. Originality/value: This study is the first to provide policy makers with some novel empirical results concerning the linkage among bank liquidity, the macroeconomic condition and financial structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decades many cities have experienced growing pressure to produce and stage cultural events of different sorts to promote themselves and improve economic development. Culture-led development often relies on significant public investment and major private-sector sponsoring. In the context of strained public finances and profound economic crisis in European peripheral countries, local community low-budget events that manage to create significant fluxes of visitors and visibility assume a particular relevance. This paper looks at the four editions (2011–2014) of Noc-Noc, an arts festival organized by a local association in the city of Guimarães, Portugal, which is based on creating transient spaces of culture by transforming numerous homes, commercial outlets and other buildings into ephemeral convivial and playful ‘public’ environments. By interviewing a sample of people who have hosted (sometimes doubling as artists) these transitory art performances and exhibitions, artists and the events’ organizers and by experiencing the four editions of the event and engaging in multiple informal conversations with the public, this paper attempts to discuss how urban citizens may disrupt the cleavages between public and private space permitting various transgressions, and unsettling the hegemonic condition of the city council as the patron of the large majority of events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic crisis signifies a turning point for Greek national self-image. The present paper explores the ideological function of interpretative repertoires in relation to the reproduction and contestation of national identity. We focus on two basic repertoires: a victimizing and a self-blaming one. Even though connotations of victimhood are not homogenous, its association with an external enemy is very popular. This paper demonstrates that discourses of victimization are not unambiguous and solidified; they interact with self-blaming discursive patterns, thus leading to hybrid perceptions of the national self-image that are adjusted to particular political actors’ strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Highlights • Lack of a clear path in the fight against energy poverty across the European union. • Energy poverty related to the residential sector allows new solutions to be developed. • Current energy poverty indicators provide an incomplete analysis of vulnerability. Abstract The term energy poverty (EP), mostly used to capture problems related to an inadequate access to energy suppliers in developing countries, and that of fuel poverty (FP), commonly employed when households suffer from insufficient monetary resources to pay for their basic energy needs, are used interchangeably by many researchers. Energy poverty and/or fuel poverty are considered to be an indication of domestic energy deprivation or energy vulnerability and remain a global problem that has been accentuated in Europe due to the economic crisis. This work has made a comprehensive review of the current concepts and indicators of FP, and of current initiatives to tackle this issue, across Europe, thereby raising the discussion of how energy vulnerability factors fit FP situations: available infrastructure, energy efficiency, social and economic poverty, and wellbeing and health. In this context, the first weak spot of the FP indicators and initiatives analyzed is that most factors that influence the everyday activities of a household are not considered (comfort, health, and wellbeing), resulting in an incomplete analysis if these are used in an isolated way. This paper provides a multiple-indicator approach to understand an FP situation beyond its traditional definition, thereby establishing a starting point for the reflection of vulnerability in policy decisions and methodological implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wave of privatisation is unfolding in Europe in the wake of the financial crisis, but it has yet to receive serious scholarly attention. This paper examines the case of Ireland, where an austerity strategy and European Union International Monetary Fund bailout conditionality have given impetus to the transfer of public assets to the private sector. Theoretically, the paper explains the roots of the phenomenon with reference to a reformulated concept of 'accumulation by dispossession' whose usefulness lies in emphasising the politico-economic drivers of privatisation, which have been neglected in the mainstream literature. A typology is presented that argues that accumulation by dispossession manifests itself, in practice, through four main processes: (1) private repossession of assets nationalised during the financial crisis; (2) restructuring of state-owned enterprises; (3) commodification of assets and services hitherto located outside the market; and (4) privatised stimulus through public-private partnerships. The paper's framework should be useful to conceptualise ongoing privatisation processes in other European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent financial crisis has triggered considerable concerns about the activities of credit rating agencies (CRAs), which has led to a shift away from self-regulation based on voluntary compliance with the IOSCO Code to the implementation of a regulatory framework at EU level under the supervision of the European Securities and Markets Authority. Against the background of the role CRAs play in the financial market system and how they have failed to fulfil their intermediary function, this paper examines the main weaknesses attributed to the operation of CRAs before and during the financial crisis and assesses the EU's regulatory response to these weaknesses. As the paper will elucidate, many of the major concerns identified have been addressed following consecutive regulatory amendments, albeit to differing degrees and levels of satisfaction, which in the future will require redress and further improvements to be implemented, including, but not limited to, the issuer-pays model, over-reliance on ratings, ratings shopping and private enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is assessing the status of e-government development in Europe in comparison with other regions of the world by analyzing evolution trends and making correlations between the financial crisis and the fluctuations registered in the indexes that are measuring e-government development. One of the most important issues addressed in this paper are the disparities registered in e-government development around the world and how the crisis affected more or less different regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary theories of the policy process typically assume that policy responses tend to go through long periods of stasis alternated with occasional bursts of intense activity. The concept of policy punctuations has been put forward to denote large-scale changes in public policies that take place in crisis moments. However, research on the dynamics of policy overreaction and underreaction is still in its infancy. It has mostly focused on either small-n cross-sectional analysis of government spending or case studies of single events. A comparative assessment of the extent of disproportionate responses in a crisis is still lacking. To fill this gap, in this paper we develop a framework to conceptualize, operationalize, and ultimately assess disproportionate policy responses systematically from a cross-sectional perspective. We create a series of indexes to measure policy over- and underreactions among the EU member states that experienced the 2007–2008 banking crisis. We found that a large majority of EU countries overreacted through public liability guarantee and budget commitment. On the other hand, regulatory responses are characterized by a greater variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate value statements communicate what a firm aspires for and what drives their value creation. In addition, corporate values often also define which behaviors are acceptable and which are not. Ideally, corporate values are representations of a firm's informal corporate values and organizational culture. However, in practice, there is an inherent tension between the aspirations and actual values and ensuing behaviors of and within a firm—let alone the potentially different interpretations of abstract corporate value statements. In this paper, we set out to provide more clarity on what corporate values are, how they are inherently ambiguous, and how in practice they compare to firm involvement in scandals. For this purpose, we study the corporate values of the 25 largest European banks after the financial crisis. “Integrity” appeared to be the most common value among the 25 banks, followed by “customer focus.” Nonetheless, over the past 6 years, 15 out of the 25 studied banks were involved in one or more scandals. Scandals can be systematic or caused by rogue employees, and benefitting the firm or their customers—in the latter case, providing an interesting interpretation of the customer focus value. Additionally, we found that courage or its synonyms were barely mentioned among banks' corporate values, potentially providing an additional explanation for the fast size of the financial crisis. Finally, we found that banks that had inclusive social principles such as respect, solidarity, and equality did not face large‐scale scandals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the crisis governance of the refugee and migrant influx into Europe in 2015 through the lenses of Kooiman’s modes of governance. The key theoretical perspectives rest upon the crisis and crisis governance literature and are applied to the initiatives taken by the European Commission and the Council in response to the so-called 2015 migrant and refugee crisis. This article questions the mode(s) of crisis governance applied by the EU to govern the massive influx of migrants and refugees. The main findings indicate that a mixed mode of governance should have been applied strategically, mainly inside the Council, in order to avoid national fragmented responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population ageing, together with the negative effects of the recent economic and financial crisis that some European countries are still facing, have threatened the sustainability of public pension systems. In this context, voluntary private pensions have emerged as the most feasible alternative to supplement the minimum provided by Social Security Systems; however, this financial product does not enjoy its expected popularity. A potential explanation of this reality might be due to the fact that European countries are far from being homogeneous, nor their pensions systems. Therefore, any policy geared toward improving financial retirement planning should take into account these potential differences. As a first approach to their analysis, this paper proposes the existence of four different ‘social models’ in Europe -namely, Continental, Mediterranean, Nordic and Transitional-. Overall, empirical evidence confirmed the significant influence of country’ ‘social model’ on the decision to invest in retirement accounts on a sample of 31,468 individuals in 2013. It was also proved that this decision is positively related to age, household income and wealth, higher levels of formal education, job situation, good health status, and long-term planning horizons; and negatively related to age squared, household size or financial risk aversion. In short, future policies and reforms regarding private pensions should not only take into account the existence of individual differences among Europeans, but also the existence of differences depending on institutional and cultural country factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the period of nearly three decades of post-socialist transition in the countries of Southeastern Europe (SEE), there were numerous synergistic, destructive and anti-developmental hindering institutional factors that directly caused the creation of social and economic insecurity. Many developmental problems, as well as social, economic and institutional deformations, have generated a lasting and deep crisis. This paper analyzes the basic deformations of public sector management, which has emerged as a driving force for all development problems in the SEE countries. It starts with two assumptions: first, weak and slow institutional changes were deliberately programmed by the nomenclature of government, in order to eliminate institutional competition and affirmation of the quasi-institutional monism of neoliberal type, which have enabled the substitutive development of the so-called alternative institutions; and second, highly interest-oriented motives of the government nomenclature have been the main cause of ignoring rational recommendations by representatives of non-institutional economic theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the impact of economic crises on organized civil society. A number of empirical studies have shown that a financial crisis can inflict a serious damage on the nonprofit sector-mainly through a sharp decline in revenues. However, the Greek case shows that a crisis can also have some positive effects on NGOs: many nonprofits introduced reforms that increased efficiency, the number of volunteers reached record levels, and there was a spectacular rise in funding by private philanthropic foundations. However, Greek NGOs continue to be dependent on external funding, unable to raise large sums from their members and the wider public. Organized Greek civil society continues to be turned upside down: dependency on EU and state funds is being replaced by dependency on private foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of the economic crisis has been highly asymmetric across the European regions. The objective of this paper is to investigate the determinants of resilience to economic crisis across European regions. Regional economic resilience was assessed based on employment changes during 2008-2013, while socioeconomic determinants were analysed pre-crisis (2002-2007). A highly heterogeneous pattern of resilience was observed within countries, while significant differences were also revealed between the continental northern-central regions and the southern periphery. A multilevel logistic regression model indicated the magnitude of country-effects on the performance of regional employment during crisis periods. Both EU-referenced and country-referenced regional resilience identified the positive effect of accessibility and the negative effect of a large manufacturing sector in the ability of regions to withstand recessionary shocks. Education and economic development level positively affected the resilience of both large and small regional European economies. Investing in education enhances the spatial homogeneity across Europe in terms of its ability to react to economic shocks. The results reveal the importance of narrowing disparities among regions and formulating targeted and differentiated regional development policies at country level, taking into consideration the size of the economy of the regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses several key issues regarding the current European economic and financial Great Crisis, which essentially is a twin sovereign debt and banking crisis. The shift of the recent world financial crisis into a European sovereign debt crisis is tackled by analyzing how via the banking system the financial contagion was extended from the US to Europe. The explanation focuses on the imbalances of European Monetary Union (EMU) countries balance-of-payments. The European crisis has shown that it can spread quickly among closely integrated economies, either through the trade channel or the financial channel, or both. In this context, TARGET2 payment system of EMU countries became crucial, reflecting funding stress in the banking systems of crisis-hit European countries. The paper concludes that, in the medium term, a successful crisis resolution requires more political integration, which should include a fiscal union and a banking union. However, in the short run, a prompt recovery is essential to get out of trouble, and this requires that surplus countries (particularly Germany) expand aggregate demand and let domestic wages and the ensuing inflation rate increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we want to analyse how efficiency evolves in the European Union 28 over the period 2003 - 2012. This period is selected to highlight the evolution before and after the global financial crisis. We used a sample of over 1000 banks with data available for at least ten years and at least three banks for each country. For measuring bank efficiency, we used two of the most popular financial ratios, Return on Average Assets (ROAA) and Return on Average Equity (ROAE). Our results showed that European Union integration can be improved and further reforms could be implemented and bank are affected differently by the international financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the current Eurozone crisis, this paper argues that the economic crisis has provoked a crisis of identity in the EU. This paper examines popular discourse on Germany and Angela Merkel in the Eurozone periphery, France and the UK according to which Europe is effectively being colonised by Germany—the so-called ‘Fourth Reich’. Using theories of fear and disgust including Burke's Sublime, Kristeva's Abject and, especially, Freud's Uncanny, it is argued that this Discourse can be understood as an essentially Gothic narrative based around the fear of the ‘return of the repressed’—in this case Nazi Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sparked by the recent great recession and the role of financial markets, considerable interest exists among researchers within both the academic and public community in measuring and modeling systemic risk. This article introduces a new framework for measuring systemic risk by using a risk-adjusted balance sheet approach. In this regard, the analysis of 21 largest commercial banks operating in 7 countries from Central and Eastern Europe, shows potential risk which could threaten all the financial system. The paper concludes new directions for measuring systemic risk by using Merton model. It shows how risk management tools can be applied in new ways to measure and analyze systemic risk in European banking system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last half of the twentieth century was a period of unprecedented growth in homeownership in the United States and Europe. In the UK and the USA, policy and government actions were focused on increasing homeownership as part of a new ‘ownership society’. This was especially true in the 1990s and 2000s. Now, in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis and the housing market collapse, there is renewed concern with the loss of housing-wealth, affordability and even whether ownership will ever be attainable for low-income and minority populations. This paper examines the rise in home ownership as governments engaged in a policy experiment of greatly expanding ownership. The paper extends the aggregate studies of the housing crisis by examining population cohort behavior during the housing bubble and the individual outcomes as a result of the housing experiment. I use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to evaluate the impacts of the debt burden and negative equity on ownership and conclude that they will have long-term impacts on the ability of low-income and minority households to enter the housing market or even to keep their homes. The policy goal of a broadened ownership society will be difficult to sustain in the light of stagnant incomes and high prices even after the recent decline in house values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes lead firms' reactions to crisis in global automotive value chains. The paper advances five theses. Author argues that crisis is not over yet, the global restructuring of the industry continues. Actors in the CEE automotive cluster have successfully become integrated into global value chains and have thereby been the winners of past restructuring processes. Nevertheless, technological and market uncertainties prevail: entry of new economic actors and the diffusion of new business models may, in the long run, disrupt the current status quo and jeopardise the world economic position of CEE countries that have been relying solely on their labour cost advantages to sustain direct investment inflows in their automotive industries. In the long run the automotive industries of Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies may become threatened by the transformation of the prevailing automotive business model, the outsourcing of manufacturing and related support activities to complex manufacturing services providers, which could lead to the closure of lead firms' manufacturing facilities in CEE. Lead firms' increased focus on high quality high value adding activities strategy can and should be followed by local subsidiaries through a continuous strive for upgrading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of the following paper is to compare the impacts of the financial and economic crisis of 2008 and the following years to the European Union and Latin America. Afiera brief description of the origins and characteristics of the 2008 crisis, the article analyse its effects on the two regions, the implemented politics on both sides and its results. Based on the comparative evaluation of these answers, we deduce some lessons and formulate some recommendations which could contribute to reduce the probability that such crisis repeat in the future or make it at least easier to manage. From a theoretical point of view, we refer o the concepts of neo-realism, new-institutionalism, social-constructivism (norms, values, self-perception, discourse) and, taking on consideration the strong relationship between internal and external factors, "two level game". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the outbreak of the crisis in Southern Europe, young highly educated Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese and Greeks have been taking their talents and expertise to other countries in search of a better quality of life and career prospects. This paper explores the characteristics of these new emigrants, the reasons for which they are leaving, and whether these reasons are shaped by the economic crisis, by pre-crisis grievances, or by other factors. We analyse original data from 6377 questionnaires collected in 4 countries through an e-survey we ran in 2013. We refer to the existing literature on the drivers of highly skilled emigration and the (un)employment situation in the four aforementioned Southern European countries which have been hardest hit by the economic crisis. We suggest that while gender is not important, age, marital status, education and satisfaction with current employment (both income related and with regard to future prospects) are important factors predicting emigration. Non-economic factors, notably career opportunities, quality of life and future prospects supersede all other considerations in the decision to emigrate for these highly educated Europeans. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper reveals a relevant dimension of social economy in Europe: cooperatives. Like many other types of enterprise, cooperatives face the challenge of finding the most efficient means to distribute insufficient resources. But contrasting most other enterprises, cooperatives also need to seek a sustainable stability between members' needs and economic challenges. The paper discusses issues related with the contributions of cooperative enterprises to poverty reduction, employment generation and social integration, the contributions of cooperative to the EU 2020 strategy and the impact of economic crisis on the cooperative enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The boost in social housing interventions is the answer to the growing demand for new housing caused by higher social vulnerability in the wake of the economic and financial crisis in Europe. It meets the goal of inclusive growth, as defined in Europe 2020's growth strategy. This paper deals with this issue starting from an analysis of the social events that are worsening the housing problem in Europe, and which are exasperated by the anti-crisis measures implemented by the Governments of the most financially stricken countries. This paper then highlights the key role played by social managers as the element that guarantees intervention sustainability. The case-study of the Fondazione Housing Sociale demonstrates how the social manager is a key element in social housing interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the collapse of communism countries of Central-Eastern Europe amended their constitutions and declared law-governed state as form of regimes. 27 years after collapse of communisms there is huge problem with rule of law. Formally is function but practice does not confirm it. The paper try to explain this phenomenon using theory of two transformations; visible and hidden one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]