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The paper describes the economical context of the emergence of the social economy, its main characteristics and dimensions; it identifies the similarities and the differences amid the social economy and the liberal economy in particular. As a descriptive-explanatory paper, it develops on the technical literature in order to highlight the importance of this sector within the ensemble of the market economy, the difficulties that it confronts with as a competitive actor and the chances of insuring the sustainability of social enterprises. The conclusions of the paper point to the idea that, despite the obstacles it confronts with, the sector of social economy has availability of development by itself representing an opportunity of increasing the occupational degree by inserting the disadvantaged groups on the labour market.

The research is devoted to the analysis of Romanian exports competitiveness determined by the number of won/lost ranks in the world exports rankings (hierarchy) in 2014 as compared with 2001. The paper reveals the existence of four categories of exports, based on SITC (two digits), classified in function of the decreasing number of won positions in the world exports hierarchy as follows: category I with high competitiveness potential (HCP), 68-33 won positions; category II with competitiveness potential (CP), 29-15 won positions; category III with medium competitiveness potential (MCP),14-8 won positions; category IV with low competitiveness potential (LCP), 7-0 won positions. A comparison is made between Romania and new EU member countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia ) which were positioned upward and downward Romania, within each group of exports by the following three categories (weak, medium and high potential of competitiveness). According to the EU Competitiveness Report on 2015, Romania belongs to the category of EU countries with modest but improving competitiveness. Romania is a country with an emerging economy, which is characterized by a structure of export of goods marked notably by a relatively low share of high-tech groups of approx. 8% (Financial Stability Report, 2015 BNR).One of the main conclusions of the paper is that Romania on international export markets is rather a price-taker than a price-maker due to a relatively low degree of the national exported goods and services. Another conclusion is related to a promising improvement for certain groups of export goods competitiveness especially for the raw materials and semi-products (II-IV group of SITC), where at macro-level the trade balance of Romania is positive, unlike the case of the majority of EU member countries, meaning the necessity to improve and stimulate export diversification especially via smart specialisation and promoting higher value-added product exports.

The importance of achieving a sustainable development was greatly discussed during the last decades, especially due to the negative implications of pollution on the surrounding environment. During such conferences each country was requested to cut down the pollution level. Of course, ideal would be that this diminishing of green house effect gases to be obtained by gradually replacing the present resources we use with those less damaging to the entire planet, replacement which, as we know, cannot be done as a whole, at least not now. In this paper we have focused our attention on the county of Bihor from Romania, county that has both conventional resources, which, as it may be seen here, are heavily exploited, and also important unconventional ones. The paper has two parts: the first part presents in a nutshell the natural background of Bihor County as well as the existent conventional resources and the situation generated by the exploitation of such resources in order to assure the thermal comfort of the inhabitants. In the second part we describe a scenario about the emissions of CO2 in Bihor County, under the conditions of assuring the peoples’ thermal comfort only by burning fossil fuels. The scenario starts from existent data about the average quantity of thermal energy used by one inhabitant of Bihor County corroborated with the manner of obtaining the thermal energy in this part of the country. What it is intended to highlight in this work are the strong ecological implications (and, implicitly the deriving economic and social ones) of using conventional resources in this area, considering that Bihor County sits on a large geothermal water basin.

This paper is intent on highlighting the differences between traditional food products registered in every member state of the EU. The legislative system protecting the 'peculiar, endemic', food products was first introduced in the EU in 1992 and it was implemented in the then - member states.The countries that adhered to the EU in the following years underwent a preparation phase in terms of legislation in order to educate the producers and consumers regarding these regulations.Therefore, some countries have a history of over twenty years in recognizing and registering traditional food products(TFP), whereas newly - entered EU member states have an experience of less than ten years.This can be one of the many reasons underlying the significant discrepancy in the number of traditional food products registered in every EU member state.Throughout the paper we intend to analyse and highlight the number of traditional food products registered in the European Union’ s database– DOORdatabase– by every EU member state, and also provide an overview of their status in the EU.Moreover, throughout the paper we will answer questions such as„ Why does France have 255 traditional food products registered, whereas countries like Romania and Bulgaria only 4 ? “aiming to justify these differences but also present the evolution of the supply of traditional food products over time.To achieve the objectives of our research, we have covered vast literature and we have processed a series of secondary data that were put at our disposal by the databases of the European Commission, the agricultural sector.The results of our research are interesting, and the graphs will help better visualize and understand the status of the supply of traditional food products from a quantitative point of view countrywide.The identified elements as influencing factors in the quantitative supply of traditional food products and their grouping in a series of criteria tantamount to the elements pertaining to the marketing macro - environment reflect in the qualitative results, therefore bringing academic value to the aforementioned paper.The practicality of this paper can be highlighted by emphasizing the need to educate the consumers(well - informed, to know which and how many 'genuine', traditional food products are there) but also the producers (to know how to relate to the competition).

The paper intends to bring to the reader’s attention the importance of understanding the role education plays in creating a good geopolitical position for a state which has a good geographical position, and which is well endowed in natural resources. The case of Romania is the main focus of the paper. There is presented a peculiar strange situation of a country (Romania) which is very well located from geographical point of view but which is incapable to exploit its natural endowments and special location. One reason for this situation is the fact that most people living in present Romania belong to a category named in this paper ‘individuals’. Individuals are not aware of their country’s geography and history, let alone its possible future development possibilities. They do not know the role their country could play, and living in an atomized society, they choose emigration as the easiest way to escape harsh social and economic environment. Contrary to this attitude is that of a citizen, a man conscious about his country’s potential, and which is dedicated to work hardly together with his fellows in order to promote national interests in a peaceful manner. Even there was found remnants of an ancient city close to present day Romanian territory – proves of well endowed environment – moral and psychological factors have contributed after 1990 in an crucial manner to push Romania from its civilization path back to the archaic spirit, from active urban spirit to rural mentality. In such a situation it is not uncommon for a nation to lose its means for projecting power, which could promote the value and the importance of a geographical position – transportation; rural mentality has nothing to do with modern transportation as they are technical tools with geopolitical essence for controlling space. It is a well known fact that transportation and geopolitics are closely interrelated. Furthermore, social dissolution in post communist Romania is identified in population reduction’s number, in missing trust in her successful evolution, falling agriculture and deforestation. All these negative aspects have pushed back Romania from geopolitical point of view. As solution for regaining its geopolitical role, Romanian must have an educated population, which would be conscious about the important connection between geography and education, and between Romania’s geographical position and the needed tools for promoting it from geopolitical point of view. Cough between East and West, Romania belongs to both areas; much more, in the context of climate change, Romania’s land, fresh water, and cheap water transport possibilities on Danube and Black Sea (and well beyond it) must be used at their real capacities. Only in that moment Romania’s special geographical position will made Romania an active geopolitical actor, helping Romanians to determine its fate in a sustainable manner.

Present paper tackles several research paradigms regarding tax compliance behavior that have been used to understand tax evasion phenomenon and tax avoidance behavior of the taxpayer. These notions have been studied by numerous researchers all over the world as phenomenon of tax evasion has a debating issue on every state agenda for several decades. First economic model of tax compliance behavior was developed in the early 1970s and since then researchers improved the model adding new elements from sociology, psychology, legal studies, finance, game theory, neurosciences, econophysics and others. This paper presents the most important developments of current theories regarding tax compliance behavior starting from the economics-of-crime model,till the 'slippery slope framework ', and more. It creates the premises for a Romanian model of tax compliance behavior according to national characteristics regarding taxpayers attitude towards tax avoidance, risk appetite or aversion upon enforcement of law through punishment and penalty, taxpayers’ trust in authority’s efficient spending of tax collected revenue to public budget and personal beliefs regarding notions like morality, cheating, honesty, social responsibility, loyalty, patriotism, civic duty, guilt, fairness, reciprocity or financial incentives. Recent models of tax compliance behavior underline the importance of the dynamics between all the actors involved in the fiscal system such as government, tax authorities, tax consultants and accountants and the behavior of all other taxpayers as a whole. Current research trends believe that these are mutually related. Another important aspect regarding taxpayer’s attitude towards tax avoidance is its own motivation to voluntarily pay taxes driven by intrinsic beliefs or by fear of penalty coming from enforcement of laws. On the contrary, other taxpayers choose to assume an extra share of risk and decide to avoid taxes hiding in anonymity of masses. This paper intends to study the relevance of current models in tax compliance behavior applied to Romanian fiscal system.

The purpose of this paper is to examine, from an empirical point of view, the relations between leadership and the formation and implementation of a creativity supportive organizational environment. Employee creativity has proven to be, in recent years, extremely important when it comes to organizational efficiency and performance and, also, when it comes to gaining sustainable competitive advantages. Furthermore, employee creativity produces solutions to different organizational problems, solutions that have the ability to transform the organization into a highly innovative one. The goal of this paper is to seek out relevant correlations between different variables related to organizational leadership, especially transformational leadership and organizational creativity. The findings presented in this paper are generated by the answers provided by over 200 questionnaires gathered from companies located in North – Western Romania and contribute to the creation of an organizational model focused on the active support of creativity by revealing a series of characteristics and activities that leaders need to present and perform in order to encourage employee creativity. It is paramount that leaders provide employees with sufficient liberty and maneuvering space so that they can better put into practice their creative abilities and generate innovative solutions, but also it is important for leaders to offer their support and guidance when the situation asks for this. Furthermore, as you will be able to see in this paper, leaders need to create an organizational settlement that will motivate employees to set their own standards and to make constant efforts to surpass these standards, in other words, to become more efficient and to always seek new ways of improving their work. The findings of this paper allow managers and leaders to better understand some elements that influence employee creativity and provide them with the knowledge necessary to implements an organizational environments focused on creativity.

Environmental pollution represents one of the problems that humanity is facing right now, problems that create a series of economic, ecologic and social consequences. This paper wishes to identify by presenting concrete data, some of the negative effects that occurred as a result of the increase of pollution on global scale, for example like the rise of global temperature. Starting with the industrial revolution but especially with the increase of the population’s needs, desires, interests that occurred during the last decades, environmental pollution intensified to an extent that we could even consider alarming. A main effect which can be easily observed by each and every person without the need to perform measurements, is the climate warming which has a series of consequences, like for example: drought, natural disasters, decrease in agricultural production, fires (especially wildfires which reduce the population of wild animals), etc. So the effects of global warming are not just ecologic but also economic and social. Another aspect analyzed in this paper is the rise of the seas’ and oceans’ temperature which inevitably results in the decrease of the population of fish and aquatic animals. The melting of glaciers is another negative effect of the climate warming which is discussed in this paper, effect which is responsible for numerous floods that result from the rise of the sea levels causing numerous damages, the most affected people being those living in the vicinity of waters. During floods, phenomenon which occurs more and more often, drainage channels are overused many times not being able to handle the huge quantities of water, thus favoring the multiplication and spreading of rodents. There are evidences showing that the number of cases of diseases transmitted by rodents increases during natural disasters, which occur more and more often during the last decades.

The importance of human resources in modern companies has raised several research issues in the specialized literature. One of particular importance concerns the approach to human resources management practices. The research papers have revealed two main approaches - the administrative and the strategic one. The second orientation proved to be the one that generated different debates. The strategic perspective implies the existence of differences in practice concerning the development of specific human resources activities within the companies. The results of several specialised studies concerning the human resources management practices within Romanian companies were presented. We considered it necessary in order to understand the situation of this particular field and its specific approach in the companies located in our country. This paper aims to analyze the use of such approach in companies located in Constanta county, through an empirical study. It intends to investigate whether there are major differences concerning the assessment of the importance of specific practices (human resources planning, training, performance appraisal, and career management) between the companies having a human resources strategy and the ones without a human resources strategy. It also aims to investigate if the importance granted to the above mentioned set of practices varies function of the size of the company (number of employees). The research tool used was a questionnaire distributed to human resources managers or to other persons in charge of the specific human resources activities. A total of 75 questionnaires were distributed between October – November 2015, and 62 were returned filled in. The results of the study are in line with results of previous studies regarding human resources management practices in Romanian companies. Namely, the results indicated that the perceived importance of human resources planning and training was significantly different in companies having a human resources strategy from the ones without a human resources strategy. Moreover, the level of the perceived importance of the specific practices considered in the analysis (human resources planning, training, performance appraisal, and career management) varies significantly function of company size. The relevance of the present study is heralded by the interesting revealed facets of human resources management practices in Romanian companies, and represents a starting point for further research on the two main approaches on human resources management – the strategic approach vs. the administrative one.

Today we are living in a flat world, a place where all the economies are competing with each other from different perspectives. This paper will not be only about the fiscal competition, but also about the minimum wage which can provide some competitive advantages to the companies enlisted in the European Union countries. The issue is not about the developed countries, economically speaking, but about those who are in no such conditions. In the first part of the paper there will be some fiscal competition details presented: direct and indirect taxes, income tax rates, social security contributions and many other aspects which concern the fiscal policy of the member countries of the European Union. After that, will be tested the nature, the strength and the intensity of the correlation between those fiscal aspects and the minimum wages that are applied in these countries. The paper will try to prove if these elements of those two categories are, together, able to provide some competitive advantages to the economies which are less economically developed. In this respect, the paper will use data from European statistics – EUROSTAT, and, also, data from the fiscal and the social authorities in the member countries of the E.U. Based on these facts, the paper will conclude whether a link could be established between minimum wage and fiscal elements, on one hand, and some economic advantages for some of the member countries, on the other hand. All these, with a result in an increase in the economic balance, in order to align the less developed countries with the advanced ones in this perspective.

Abstract Facing increasing interregional and international competition, the need for innovating economic and socio-institutional structures is virulent. One possibility is establishing clusters to promote the idea that developing a network of companies with a mix of cooperative and competitive practices leads to competitive advantages for the respective area. Organizing clusters means developing a cluster culture, a communication strategy and a selection criterion for creating the desired mix of companies. We base our opinion paper on an extensive literature review of scientific sources about clusters, cluster policy and Place Leadership. We reveal that the prevailing cluster policy often does not lead to sustainably successful clusters. We conclude that we need a shared vision among cluster members to develop resilient clusters. Shared visions create a sense of belonging, social identity, and internalization of values and attitudes. This way, it is possible that a sustainable and trust-oriented network structure can develop, and knowledge spillovers within the cluster, necessary for resilient clusters, can occur. True Place Leadership is crucial to deal with the needed diversity of actors and stakeholders, some of whom are in competition, inspiring, motivating, and guiding shared, cooperative, and collaborative ways of working. Employing Place Leadership can outperform current policy measures in other regional, industrial and structural areas and might even make them redundant.

The purpose of this paper is to present preliminary specific issues concerning the vision and the strategic thinking of the managers of Romanian fast growing firms in the years of rapid growth. This paper clarifies two research questions. (1) The first research question is what is the message of the manager's vision of the Romanian fast growing firms? Therefore, we must first verify if the managers of the Romanian fast growing firms have a concrete vision about the business they run and if so, what is the vision of the managers about the companies that they lead? (2) The second research question is what findings can be drawn about the role of strategic thinking of the managers in the management of the Romanian fast growing firms? The research that we have conducted is a qualitative research. The research method that we used is the interview. The interview is specific to qualitative research. Regarding the method of analysis that we used it is the content analysis. The research was conducted on a total of 17 Romanian fast growing firms that are located in Timiș County. The firms were identified based on a specific selection criteria set after a thorough review of the literature in the field. The 17 companies that we have analysed represent the foundation of 17 in-depth case studies, which we believe helped us to better understand what it means in the Romanian context to grow fast, through the entrepreneurs managers vision and strategic thinking. The results presented in this paper come to strengthen the results reached by other researchers in this field. The results present an image of the current Romanian context – about the role of strategic thinking of the entrepreneur manager in the management of Romanian fast growing firms. The paper presents a detailed analysis of managers' vision of the Romanian fast growing firms. The paper also presents findings about the role of strategic thinking in helping managers achieve rapid growth in the Romanian context.

This paper aims to develop a conceptual model used in the empiric testing of a firm’s marketing capabilities and describe the effects of these capabilities over organizational performance. Previous research explains performance differences between firms through the resource-based view and the structure-conduct-performance paradigm. Criticism towards these two perspectives, emerging from absence of a low competitive level market, lack of an explanation towards the manner in which resources are developed and how these need to be exploited to generate a competitive advantage and the shortage of solutions in dynamic environments has determined the development of the marketing capabilities perspective. Because of these limits, many of the studies in the area of strategic marketing reported a misperception of managers towards marketing and thus the focus of managers only on the operational dimension of marketing. A firm’s marketing capabilities represent a multidimensional construct, a combination of human assets, market and organizational assets. The present research uses results collected through the processing of 121 questionnaires completed by large Romanian companies, and tests the existence of marketing capabilities and their effects on organizational performance in these firms through simple linear regression. The constructs’ measurement scales are determined to be reliable because the Alpha Cronbach value exceeds 0.6. Validity of the constructs was proven through the use of factor analysis. Thus, the paper confirms the existence of marketing capabilities on a firm’s level and its positive effect on performance. One major contribution of the present study is that it offers an addendum to empirical data on the effects of marketing capabilities over organizational performance available in literature.

The new European migration wave poses extreme consequences for the balance of the European Union, as it was showed by the last trimester of 2015 and the first trimester of 2016.The German politic, unanimously adopted by all state members, is seeing some serious cracks, especially in economic terms. This paper aims to look at the real economic implications the migration wave has upon the European Union and determine whether the influence of such a high number of migrants might help the Union diminish its economic debts or, on the contrary, will most likely pose a threat to the system. The extensive literature in the field is highly up to date, which determines the research process to be one relevant for future inquiries. Already, Europe finds itself in one of the most risky situations after the World War II – protecting its boarders from the outside, as well as from the inside. Latest terrorist attacks that took place in Europe (in Paris two times, in Ankara, as well as in Brussels) confirm that the continent is on the verge of losing the fight against terrorism, as the phenomenon seems to already propagate within its own foreign communities. The latest terrorism actions were conducted by European citizens of foreign ethnicity, which can only make one wonder what will the main effect of embracing even larger foreign communities of migrants, within the heart of Europe, be in the upcoming years. The paper will also look closely at one of the most foreseen negative effect of massive migration in Europe – the possible resurgence of terrorism in the area. Albeit the differences between various European communities is striking, European authorities must find a way to determine everyone cope as one, or else the future of the European Union’s borders as they are today is in danger. The qualitative methodology used in the present article focuses on a relevant literature, as well as specific data received and interpreted from reliable first-party sources: International Monetary Fund, Eurostat, Global Terrorism Index, Global Terrorism Database, OECD, etc.

In our paper we have dealt with the biomass-based energy production during the agricultural production, since the sustainable energy management is one of the most actual issues. In our paper we have dealt with the biomass-based energy production during the agricultural production, since the sustainable energy management is one of the most actual issues. In our research we wanted to know how much renewable energy could be produced on a field of 1800 hectares with five plants (silage maize, Lucerne, wheat, maize, sunflower). Data of the energy content were collected from literature, all other data were collected from a company in the Northern Great Plain Region with 1800 hectares and the information from the Institute of Agricultural Engineering (IAE). Besides, we analysed how much income could be reached and for what the produced energy could be used, what demand it could meet by replacing fossil energy sources having high environmental pressure. Crop production technologies applied in the model were set up by the practical experiences of a real agricultural company. Working operations were set on a monthly basis with the assignment of prime mover – machinery relations. The material needs of the working operations were also set (fertilizers, pesticides, sowings, twines, silage foil) where it was needed. To answer our research question two model variants were elaborated. In the first model variant the five crops were competed by the maximum energy content, and in the second variant by the maximum gross margin. Production optimization was done for 1800 hectares. We supposed that 100% of the plant products are marketed (animal farms are not considered), and in the model only raw material production is done (further processing of plant products for energy purposes are not part of this analysis). Besides, we supposed that these five plants will be used as: by-products (wheat straw, maize stem, sunflower stem) and Lucerne hay by direct combustion; bioethanol from wheat

Purchased Goodwill appears when a company acquires another company. It can be defined as an intangible asset that arises as a result of the acquisition of one company by another for a premium value. International accounting bodies such as the IASC or the FASB require acquiring firms to record goodwill as an asset when they purchase a target firm and pay more than the fair market value of the identifiable net assets of that firm. As a consequence of these regulations, the goodwill appears in accounts of a company only when it acquires certain intangible assets that are not identifiable. Because the purchased goodwill arises in business combinations this concept is detailed in the standards on business combinations (FAS 141 and IFRS 3) rather than those on intangible assets and goodwill (FAS 142 and IAS 38). In this paper I present the modality in which is perceived currently the purchased goodwill and its components. In the present it is considered that the purchased goodwill is the result of an evaluation made by the bidding company over the target company and appreciating the contribution of it to the achievement of the strategic objectives of the purchaser. Goodwill is perceived as the sum of the present values of the additional cash-flows that can be generated at the level of acquiring company as result of acquisition. The sources of these future additional cash-flows are considered, in the present, unidentifiable intangible assets of the target company and the estimated synergies between entities that will combine. In the final part of my working paper I have analysed the level and the components of the goodwill that was paid in the Microsoft-Nokia transaction. As is reflected in the Microsoft Annual Report 2015 (Note 9 Business Combination), “the goodwill had a proportion of 37% in the value of total acquired assets and, was primarily attributed to the increased synergies that were expected to be achieved from the integration of NDS “. In this paper I present the results of my analysis related by the types of synergies that was estimated to be obtained as result of this transaction.

Economic development and social empowerment in Romania are unconcievable in the absence of a modern education system, which needs both economic and financial investments and social, political, cultural measures to increase the inclusion of young people in school system. In this particular context, given that Romania faces a high degree rate of school dropout, and moreover there are few chances that Romania reach its goals, we try in this paper to look inside the real situation. Indeed, school dropout present serious negative consequences both on individual level and for the whole society. Recognising this fact, next step is to investigate and reveal the determining factors for this situation, and we are particularly interested in the economic and systemic factors. Consequently, we present in this paper first a brief literature review on the fenomenon of school dropping out, including reviewing main studies related to factors, effects, causes etc. In the second part, starting from several statistical data provided by INS, EUROSTAT and UNICEF studies, we propose some theoretical models and policy reccomendations in order to decrease the school dropout rate and especially the early school dropout rate.

The present paper is part of a larger study that aims to identify some of the factors that have a great impact on the quantum of the damages awarded in ICSID cases. The driver of this study is the high level of the damages awarded in this sort of disputes between foreign investors and the host state. In 2012 the ICSID tribunal awarded more than 1.77 billion USD for a breach of Fair and Equitable Treatment standard and indirect expropriation by Ecuador. Another reason for choosing this subject is the increasing number of the cases judged at this Centre. The analytical method used for analysing the determination relation between the identified factors and the quantum of the damages is the linear regression analysis. For the data collection were used as many cases’ awards as could been found published on the official site, from which were selected the cases were damages were awarded, in number of 30. For all the analysis made the statistical signification was followed and additional statistics trimming methods used, were necessary. The first factor that had been chosen was the value of damages requested, the calculations showing the impact assumed for it. The reasons beside this selection are pretty obvious: it is the most obvious factor on which the arbitrator can rely, it has the same nature of value, and it’s based on an expert’s report of damages’ valuation. There is plenty room for further analysis, this only representing the starting point, but is very important step in configuring the data base on which the following analysis will be set. For each case studied there are other characteristics, beside the value of damages requested, that were extracted and presented in order to determinate there impact or the lack of impact. For these factors is needed a preparation operation of pondering because of their nature, non-numerical, so that these will be the subject of a further analysis. The importance of this paper is also given by the definitions of the elements used in the factors’ impact analysis.

The aim of teaching a foreign language is to make students able to communicate well. Speaking is one of the four skills of teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and plays a significant role in daily communication and educational process. As a consequence of the fact that the communicative approach is increasingly used in EFL situation, we underline the importance of students’ communicative competence. Learners have serious problems in mastering the communicative skills due to the fact that curricula pay more attention to English grammar, reading and vocabulary. Listening and speaking skills are not considered as important parts of many course books and teachers do not seem to pay attention to these skills while designing lessons. Speaking levels of learners are different from each other as this ability is affected by crucial factors. In many English language classes, the methods focusing on grammar are used for teaching and this method has proved inadequate to the demands for producing efficient English speakers. Speaking is a complex and dynamic skill that involves the use of several simultaneous processes and a speaker needs to almost instantly activate knowledge and skills. In spite of its undisputed importance, speaking has been a rather neglected skill in second language acquisition, research, teaching, and assessment. It is now widely accepted that speaking should be the basis of teaching practice and this is a serious challenge for English teachers; however, it is crucial in the development of English language communicative competence. However, there has been an increased focus on the speaking ability because of its perceived importance in language learning and teaching. This paper will briefly analyse the causes that create difficulties in speaking classes, in particular in the case of the advanced level of foreign language proficiency students. The difficulties examined concern the choosing of the appropriate framework and approach and suggest some speaking activities which seem appropriate for advanced language learners. Finally the paper will focus on a particular case that of preparing students for speaking tests they may sit for.

The way that companies are doing marketing has changed dramatically over the years, vividly encouraged by the new channels of communications that have been developed, the social communities here included. This paper focuses on the IT industry and aims to analyse the impact of social media conversations on the brand image of cloud computing providers, with special focus on three social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Through using netnography as main method of research, the paper aims to do a comparative analysis both from the point of view of different IT brands and from the point of view of different social communities, leveraging the use of specific hashtags. The research focuses on different aspects, such as number of conversations around a specific hashtag, type of topics, type of promoters, timeframe, geography, as well as the way these link and influence brand perception. The findings aim to help marketers better understand how and to what extent the conversations going on in social media can impact the perception and image of a brand and how they can leverage this to their advantage, with specific focus on the IT industry. As the below study shows, online marketing, especially through social media, can help shape the image of a brand in certain ways according to the different social network used. Due to the extensive reach that these online communities have, with the right tools, messages and influencers, marketers from the IT industry can benefit from a very useful and cost effective branding strategy which can help position their IT solutions in both a reliable and rapid way. On the other side, special care still needs to be taken regarding the messages that are being sent across these platforms, as once being launched it is very difficult to erase them and change the perception already in place. Also, overall, the brand perception of the companies analysed proved to be more or less consistent all over the different social networks, however this is again a very sensitive aspect to which marketers need to pay special consideration.

Several studies in the existing literature of education research provide empirical evidences that low-achiever higher education students tend to predict and evaluate their own academic performance less accurately than those who perform better in their studies. Former papers have also supported that low-performers generally over-evaluate (both before and after examinations) while high-performers regularly underestimate their performance (or at least they are overestimating to a significantly lower extent). These findings highlight that less good skills and/or abilities are only a part of the low-achievers’ handicap. Another serious problem is that they are unaware about these problems (this phenomenon is sometimes referred to as ’Dunning–Krueger effect’). More information on this tendency is useful for both educators and researchers of education, because helping students who are facing this double challenge needs a better understanding of the processes and factors in the background. One of the information still missing from the literature is the results of testing and comparing the self-assessment patterns of students with different background. As a contribution to this area of research we measure the self-assessment differences between full-time and part-time business students. After a brief introduction and a short review of the empirical literature the current paper tests the above mentioned hypotheses on two small samples of full-time (N = 64) and part-time (N = 63) business students from the same course, university and majors. All the students wrote the same test type (multiple choice). Our main results support that in the cases of both the full-time and the part-time students the low-achievers showed a significantly greater mean overestimation. This was true for the pre- and also for the post-examination self-assessment. At the same time, self-assessment accuracy (measured indirectly via the absolute value of the self-assessment error) connected positively to the students’ test performance only in the case of part-time students. Moreover, performance and self-assessment accuracy showed a positive linear correlation in case of part-time, a negative linear correlation in the case of full-time students.

The current paper aims to give an overview upon the evolution of the Chinese economical growth over the past two decades. By combining two types of analyses, the paper would also like to look on China’s economical growth perspectives in the past two decades. Thus, in the first part of our study we illustrate the results of a descriptive, critical, subjective and qualitative analyses on the main macroeconomic indexes used in determining the economic performance of a country (GDP, GDP per capita, imports and exports). The second part of the paper consists of a quantitative analysis of China’s economical growth, which combines the results of a time series econometric modulation for the GDP macroeconomic variable, and the resulted forecast based on the previously determined pattern. We based our study on a period of time dating from 1990 to 2014, suggesting that China registered a positive evolution both in terms of GDP and GDP per capita, as well as in terms of commercial exchanges, as a result of an economic reform gradually applied. Moreover, in order to determine China’s position within the current hierarchy of power centers, the G7 states (USA, Japan, Great Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Italy) were also introduced in the analysis. In terms of GDP, the United States was an absolute global leader until 2014 when it was outrun by China. As for the quantitative analysis, the period of time taken into consideration was also between the first trimester of 1990 and the third trimester of 2014, the observed values having a trimestral frequency. The final part of the study shows the results of the GDP forecast based on the previously determined ARMA pattern, as well as the forecasts given by the main international organizations (IMF and OECD), claiming China’s worldwide supremacy in terms of GDP, both on a short term (until 2020 - IMF), as well as on a long term and a very long term (until 2045, when Canada will swipe first places - OECD). The main conclusions which can be drawn by this study claim that, despite the slowing down of the GDP increase rate, China became a worldwide leader. Nonetheless, in order for China to keep its status, it must continue its ascending path from the past few decades and reorient to improve its global competitiveness and to ensure its economic sustainability.

The paper presents the important aspects of local and territorial development, such as strategic planning, sustainable development strategies, and integrated development plans. The comparative analysis allows the reference to real situations at the managerial level in the Romanian and European public administration. Thus, an ideal optimal model can be built for similar structures where sustainable development programs. The case studies presented in the paper may represent models of good practice for any city hall in Romania as regards the increase of institutional and administrative capacity at the level of local authorities and civil societies, the management of polycentric territorial-administrative development. An important role in sustainable development in Romania, will go to continuous education, for the acquisition of new communication skills, risk management, business management, for a more effective activity which is adapted to continuous changes in market conditions and for ensuring competitiveness in all fields. The Urban System presented in this paper has all the characteristics of a model structure of polycentric development that has elaborated/formulated a development overview on long and medium- term with all the strategic, tactical and operational elements that support the development within a well-defined territory. The promotion of polycentric and balanced territorial development as an essential element for the territorial cohesion realization represents one of the priorities of Europe Strategy 2020.

To counter the intensifying financial crisis, monetary policy has increasingly used unconventional measures, because conventional measures have become less effective. Several central banks have developed and implemented an unconventional monetary policy set, to boost market liquidity and to stimulate economic growth. Although in the literature there is not a unanimous approach related to unconventional monetary policy measures, we considered the following classification: forward guidance, quantitative easing and credit easing. Neighter in the case of central banks, there is no standardization of unconventional policy measures, approaches are different, being adapted to the respective economies and structures. The type of unconventional measures is significantly different in the two sides of the Atlantic, because the economy financing is structurally different. However, it is unanimous that the volume of these unconventional measures is significant in all developed economies. International contagion of domestic monetary policy is felt worldwide, but its intensity varies from country to country, depending on cross-border transmission channels. In this paper we have tried to identify and analyze the transmission channels of unconventional measures: portfolio rebalancing channel, signalling channel, exchange rate channel, global financial markets, trade channel, international lending channel, confidence channel. This paper sets out a framework for unconvetional monetary policies, highlighting the channels of international spillovers. This analysis is very important because it shows which are the effects of unconventional monetary policy measures on the economies. Although unconventional policy actions have stimulated economic growth, it is clear that there is still a great uncertainty about the long-term effects of these policies. Given the uniqueness of the measures used, there are not known all the consequences. Therefore, knowledge and a better understanding of unconventional measures is nesessary, in order to ensure systemic stability. It is desirable for the future to limit massive unconventional actions, that appeared to be necessary during the crisis.

The crisis has led to significant regional disparities, or at least to stopping the phenomenon of convergence observed before its outbreak. The poor performances of the five of the Romanian development regions put into question again the proper way to refer to this subject. This paper aims to critically analyse the measuring of regional competitiveness as it is revealed in literature and in the empirical studies. In order to achieve this goal, the paper brings forward some questions: What is regional competitiveness and how can someone measure the phenomenon? Is GDP per capita telling the whole story about regional competitiveness? What are the main factors explaining the differences in competitiveness for the Romanian regions? The methodology used is both qualitative and quantitative. It is based on critical analysis of the concept of 'sregional competitiveness' and of its estimation methods. Also, we will conduct a comparative analysis for estimation of regional competitiveness in Romania, using two different methods: regional competitiveness index developed by European Commission in 2011 and improved in 2013 (RCI 2013) and GDP per capita in 2013. The data are collected from Eurostat. We underline the fact that there is no complete measure of regional competitiveness which covers all the factors involved in describing regional competitiveness. Also, the paper aims to conclude that GDP per capita is not a sufficient tool to draw proper conclusion about regional competitiveness. Some qualitative and circumstantial factors are more appropriate to explain the differences in competitiveness results. The main conclusion is that a competitiveness index embraces more factors than purely economic aspects and it can be considered as a measure of regional competitiveness which goes beyond GDP. Through its value added, the paper may contribute to better understanding of the methods of measuring regional competitiveness and to avoid that the errors from theory could translate into practice.

Starting from Porter’s well-known approach to a nation’s competitiveness and decomposing prosperity, this paper attempts to highlights connections between competitiveness, prosperity, human development and labor productivity and labor utilization in the case of Romania. The comparative analysis of Romania’s competitiveness, prosperity and human development profiles was conducted based on The Global Competitiveness Report, Legatum Prosperity Index and Human Development Report. The paper concludes that Romania is currently facing four major categories of challenges directly related with labor utilization: population ageing, the urban-rural dualism, unemployment paradoxes and labor migration which can affect the positive trends and future progress in the areas examined.

In our today's reality change can no longer be ignored, because a lack of response to the influences manifested by the environment can have disastrous effects. The concern for implementing innovative changes becomes an imperative for those organizations that want to develop themselves and be efficient, change being the only way to achieve these goals. The pace of change in the business environment has become more and more accelerated and sometimes even the survival of the organization is threatened by the lack of orientation towards change. Managers need to identify appropriate change ideas according to the organization's particularities, which have to be correlated with specific influences exerted by the businesses environment. Even if the idea of change was very well chosen, its success depends on many actions that have to be undertaken during the implementation process. This paper aims to present a series of mistakes that can be made during the first stage of the change process and thus can contribute to the failure of the organizational change processes. The errors made during the implementation of change can be made according to several criteria, this paper presenting the mistakes that can lead to the failure of change from the perspective of the stages of the change process. This paper presents not only the mistakes that can be made in the process of change but also the actions that should be carried out by both managers and employees in order to ensure that these mistakes will no longer occur in the future. Our study was conducted on more than 150 Romanian organizations, mostly Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME’s) based on a qualitative research methodology. The interviews included both top management and employees in order to identify the specifics of the processes of change initiated by Romanian organizations and to understand why these processes of change did not have the desired results

One cannot separate decision from psychology of human being. People see world by perception and this leads to various ways of understanding even the most concrete or certain things. Financial literature reflects the subjective nature of human being in making decisions by classifying decision-making process into being 'rationally' oriented or the opposite, 'irrational', according to individual’s attitude towards risk – 'appetite' or 'aversion'. Process of understanding risk associated with future financial returns implies attaching mental probabilities to it. This activity is always affected by human nature of agents that take financial decisions, therefore bearing risk. Psychological factors such as perception, framing effect, information asymmetry, irrationality, emotions are accompanying every financial decision. Paper intends to study the direct relationship between psychological traits of a human being playing the role of a decisional agent in financial context. Financial decisions are always accompanied by the notion of probability in defining what we call as 'expected' returns that translate into risk associated with financial investments. Empirical analysis done on the financial market reflects that agents use their perception on risk of gaining or losing from a certain financial transaction to decide whether to invest or not. The notion of 'expected utility' has been complementary used with the one of 'prospect value' as financial literature evolved over time and researchers brought new insights into the mechanism of financial decision. This paper studies direct relationship between psychological traits of a human being according to classical and rational decision-making process in the light of the prospect theory and risk attitude regarding financial outcome of decisions. In this sense, an econometric model is tested on the international financial market in order to find out what kind of subjective factors lie hidden in an investor`s mind and test the degree of irrationality lies beneath a rational financial decision. The result is incorporated in a decisional model describing how agents use their perception on risk of gaining or losing from a certain financial transaction.

The paper investigates if size has any influence on firm performance for all non-financial companies listed at Bucharest Stock Exchange over 12 years period. The proxies for firm size were total assets, sales and number of employees. Control variables were tangibles, leverage, labour intensity, sales growth and company value added. Using a fixed effects panel data estimation model in order to account for individual firm heterogeneity, the paper finds a negative effect of firm size on corporate performance, when size is expressed in total assets and sales and no effect at all when number of employees is used as a proxy for size. Also, tangibles, leverage and labour intensity display a negative sign, the only positive determinants being sales growth and company value added. The findings suggest that the asset mix Romanian listed is not performance driving oriented, but is under the influence of the large amount of real-estate assets which are not directly involved in producing goods (as oppose to machine and equipments) and therefore do not directly generate profits.

Style is a crucial element of business communication, since the writer has to manage to obtain a balance between being pleasant and being polite. People use business writing to ask for a job, to inquire about different opportunities, to ask for price quotations, to get into business with partners etc. It is to the writer’s advantage to learn how to write in a business style because it is an important part of most people’s everyday life. Nowadays, due to the development of international business partnerships, business people in Romanian and not only are faced with the necessity of writing and translating official business papers from English into Romanian because English is considered the language of world business relationships. In comparison with literary texts, the texts of official documents are highly standardized. This refers to both the structure of the whole text and the arrangement of special paragraphs. The language of business documents is characterized by specific terms and expressions and also by certain grammatical and syntactical patterns. The literature in the field has showed vastly subjective approaches, yet these approaches are not all the time in accordance with existing rules of formal English. Also, there are no accepted criteria for changes that should be taken into consideration. Therefore, the main problems of people who write business documents are: how should they write it to sound correctly? How formal should they be in the content of documents, if even English-speaking people have difficulties drawing a line between formal and informal English? The aim of this paper is to investigate the stylistic peculiarities of official business documents. It starts with introductory notions regarding style and stylistic and it continues with the relation between language and its function in social settings. The second part of the paper provides a stylistic analysis of the most common features seen in business documents.

The creative economy has appeared as a new trend in the current economic reality, where information, knowledge and original creations as products of individual or work are represented as driving forces in the economic development. The main advantage brought up by the creative economy is its inexhaustible raw materials, the human capital with his creative mind. Nowadays, a company’s tangible assets or power of influence are no longer its most valuable possessions; there is something more valuable, more precisely, the intellectual capital, its human resources operating by their own will and leaving the company at the end of each working day. Any organisation, but mostly those conducting artistic or knowledge based activities must prove the ability to attract, retain and motivate valuable employees in order to exploit their arsenal and their ideas to be transformed into goods or services. Considering all the advantages of the new economic sector, a limit of the creative economy is the subjective way of assessing the created products and services’ value, the degree of satisfaction experienced by consuming such products being influenced largely by psychological factors. Creative economy presents itself as a novelty in the scientific economic field with its own terminology; thus referring to this economic sector it is required to address what is particular for it, such as: knowledge, creativity, creative industries, cultural industries, creative class, etc. This paper is a theoretical approach and it aims to present some of the specific concepts of the creative economy, more exactly the cultural industries and the creative industries. Also in order to achieve a better understanding and distinction I will present several classifications known in the literature of internationally recognised organisations such as UNESCO, UNCTAD, World Intellectual Property Organization, and others as well. Besides reviewing these approaches, the paper will show the author's own vision on the mentioned concepts.

This paper highlights the importance, development, and evolution of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), emphasizing some relevant issues in contemporary accounting, such as the need for a globally recognized financial reporting system and a conceptual base of different accounting measurement approaches in order to increase transparency and comparability in financial reporting. The first section of the paper illustrates the main reasons for the changes in financial reporting that are required in order to satisfy the information needs of both existing and potential investors of business entities in global capital markets. The subsequent section describes the main purpose and role of financial accounting, followed by a description of different ways of regulating financial reporting emphasizing the increased role of the standard-setting activities of private-sector bodies, such as the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). This section also reveals that the standards published by the IASB are gaining ever wider acceptance and recognition in today’s globalized world economy, although this also illustrates the growing future importance of IFRS and the IASB’s work in several areas. The next part of this section presents the main advantages, features, and stages of the standard-setting process of the IASB, providing evidence about how investors can use IASB’s standards as a valuable predictive device. The third section of the paper introduces some major problems associated with contemporary accounting measurement issues, for example delivering new measurement concepts in financial reporting. This section also establishes that measurement is fundamental to accounting, and for this reason the improvement of measurement concepts must be emphasized in financial reporting. In the last section the paper assesses the increased role of reporting under IFRS today and argues that the constant improvement of standard-setting contributes to satisfying the needs of investors. The main finding of this paper is that the continuous and marked improvement in standard-setting by the IFRS Foundation enhances the quality and usefulness of financial reporting.

Providing information to the general public about the interventions that receive financial assistance from the European Social Fund (ESF) is a requirement of the European Union (EU) regulations that member states must fulfill. Although, these requirements have evolved from 2007-2013 to 2014-2020, they still offer a very limited insight into the achievements made possible by the EU assistance. The introduction of the new e-cohesion concept in the implementation of the EU-funded programmes offers the national authorities new opportunities in terms of information that could be easily made available to the citizens. The paper presents an empirical study of the information already presented by the new member states that joined the EU after 2004 (except Croatia) with regard to the projects funded by the European Social Fund in 2007-2013, identifying best practices in terms of types of data that are published. Building on the experience gained in 2007-2013 and taking into account the new requirements imposed by the European Commission for 2014-2020, the paper suggests a conceptual model for data to be made available to the general public about ESF projects for the years to come. The suggested model is more result-oriented, shifting the focus from the information regarding what is to be achieved to what has actually been achieved. As it is still an early stage in the implementation of the 2014-2020 generation of ESF operational programmes, the model could be useful for the authorities in charge of their implementation when designing the webpages that publicize the use of the EU funds. The model offers an increased transparency of the ESF spending in the member states and allows a wider range of data to be used for different types of analyses and research the results of which would contribute to an increased efficiency of the EU regional policy implementation.

The present paper aims to illustrate the role that creativity holds in achieving a higher level of performance, whether we speak about micro level enterprises, small or medium sized organizations. The first part of the paper highlights theoretical aspects in defining creativity, as well as stating the main barriers that can occur, while the second part consists in a case study based on a recently drafted survey, applied on a representative sample of individuals, consisting in employees from various fields of activity.

The aim of this paper is to investigate three main events which have influenced Banca Transilvania’s stock price movements. This paper employs the event study methodology. The expected returns are computed by using two different models: Market Model and Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). Our results show that only for one event out of three the abnormal returns (ARs) were positive and statistically significant in the event day.

Credit is one of the core elements of a modern economy and easy access to credit is a hallmark of the development of the financial sector in a country. Credit cards have been in use, in many places of the world, for more than 60 years now and, in a lot of countries, having a credit card is the norm for most people. This, however, has not been the case for Romania where the market penetration of credit cards has been very limited at best. In this paper we aim to provide an overview of the debit and credit card market in Romania. We avoid focusing only on credit cards because of their limited scope at the moment of writing this paper and instead would like to determine whether they are not used because Romanians do not want to take on credits or because it is not easy to use cards as a means of payment. The paper is structured in two parts. In the first section we provide a presentation of the banking sector in Romania and how it has been impacted by the financial crisis of the last couple of years. This is followed up with a presentation of the debit and credit card market, in which we discuss both the number of transactions, by type and card, and the value of these operations. Our temptative conclusion is that the main limit on this market is the ease of use which, while improving, has not yet reach its potential. A more in-depth research, using methods specific to time-series analysis, would have been preferable, however the data series are too short at the moment and the results would have been questionable.

This paper investigate the evolution of the Romania’s exports and imports in the period 1990-2014, having in mind the relationship between external trade and sustainability of the national economy. The issue of the economic growth is addressed, considering different steps taken by Romania since the year 1990, corroborated with those of the global financial crisis which broke out in 2008. The global financial crisis, which started at the end of the year 2008, had a negative impact on exports and imports of Romania. One of the reason of this negative impact is related to the fact that Romania's economy is heavily dependent on the other EU Member States economic evolution, which is vulnerability. This strong dependence is illustrated by the high scale of the crisis impact on Romania’s GDP and on the external trade flows. The relationship between these macro-indicators is very important and it is dependent on the export resilience to the external shocks. Exports and imports increased over the whole period analyzed, so that today we can say that openness of Romanian economy is relatively high, which implies not only opportunities for external trade, but also concerns for increasing resilience of the national economy to the possible external shocks and vulnerabilities. Export resilience of Romania as well as of its county’s was analysed in this study. The main conclusion of the paper reveals that the evolution of external trade at global level failed to counteract the negative effects of the economic crisis in Romania and did not contribute to its sustainability and convergence. The GDP decline in 2009 and 2010 has been recovered only partially by 2014 even if exports and imports exceeded the maximum level before the crisis. As regard the territorial level, the export resilience is not favourable for those counties who focused theirs exports on primary products, products based on natural resources and low-technology products. This kind of exports lead to the decrease of the gains from external exchange and implicitly to a low potential of endogenous growth at the county level, mainly due to deteriorating terms of trade.

This paper tries to encompass the effects that modern industrialization of East European countries has one the working population over the age of 50. Policies and procedures that multinational corporations have proved to be difficult to follow for the ageing population in Romania; the fact that western companies have introduced specific procedures on performance appraisal and organizational development is proven to be hard to understand and follow by the ageing population of Romania. One of the core topics of the paper discusses the effects that different cultural perspectives-between Western corporations and the human capital from East European countries- may have on the ageing workforce. The fact that Western corporations are becoming an important presence in Romania’s national economy can cause major social problems for workers over the age of 50 because of the aforementioned cultural differences. Western companies generally have specific working methodologies which need to be internalized by their personnel. Considering the fact that Romania is mainly an ageing country, Western corporations depend on workers over the age of 50. In this regard, foreign companies need to adapt their training programs and general working procedures for them to be understood by workers that are accustomed to other organizational systems.As mentioned in the paper, unemployment rate remains constant for workers over the age of 50, but their performance declines compared to other age categories. This aspect shows that, even if workers over the age of 50 manage to keep their current position in a Western company, they do not excel in their tasks, relying heavily on cultural values that companies may enlist, like the promotion of retirement from the company.Adapting Romania’s ageing workforce to the standards of multinational corporations represents a key element in obtaining sustainable growth and encouraging companies to locate an operational branch in the country.

Absorption of European funds is on top of Romania’s public agenda for the last years although the first programming period has ended and the necessary lessons were learned so far. To have a high degree of absorption of funds provided by the EU must be of quality projects and their implementation to be successful. Through this work we aimed to investigate the success factors of infrastructure projects with European funding in Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, Serbia and Kosovo, and identify critical success factors of these projects through a research surveying the teams of consultants and support personnel from the countries in an international consulting company. The research results are therefore constitute the empirical evidence of what constitutes critical success factors of infrastructure projects financed by the European Union and can be used as a starting point for scientific studies of the management of European projects or other actions that investigates measures that can be taken to improve the success rate of projects implemented in the area mentioned above.One of the contributions of this paper is to identify the critical success factors of success factors present in literature. With more so as they are critical success factors of infrastructure projects with European funding still required field studies and analysis performed in the present context. In addition, the critical factors were operationalized in a conceptual framework. Moreover, this framework includes leadership style of project manager as critical success factor has been identified in the research as the most important in the context in which it was conducted. As such, this paper demonstrates, with the necessary limitations, the importance of management style of project managers in the context of specific European funded infrastructure projects. And this is happening even though there are sophisticated project management tools availabe and relevant knowledge exists at both local and international consultants. We also hope the study results represent an impetus for both theorists who bring new evidence in this direction but also for practitioners to focus their efforts on these key areas.

In 2010 the European Commission presented the Europe 2020 strategy with a focus on smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Linking one of the agenda’s main targets, i.e. increasing the employment rate among the European Union’s countries, with the current policy liberalization debate, the present study analyses the business environment and labour market policies for 30 European countries and provides an empirical classification of the two based on 2013 indicators. The most commonly approached labour market output is the unemployment rate. Thus a first section of this paper introduces the reader into the previous researches conducted on its evolution in the liberalization policy context, i.e. the impact of the labour market and business environment factors on the unemployment rate’s series. Further on, it presents a classical classification of the European labour market regimes as proposed by the literature. Grounded on a quantitative research paradigm and a positivist philosophy, the paper follows the existing literature and extends the current classification frameworks, proposing two country groupings based on business and labour market related factors. The analysis is conducted through exclusive clustering methods. As such, six clustering methodologies are applied (Ward, Exact Maximum Likelihood, Flexible-Beta Method, McQuitty’s Similarity Analysis, Single Linkage and K-means). Three country-clusters are emphasized for both analyses performed (business environment and labour market). No cluster emphasized purely liberalized policies, neither purely tight ones, but rather different mixtures of the two. The clustering aims at providing a common framework for analysing different markets’ outputs and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of different policy models. An exemplification of its utility is provided in the end section of the paper by analysing the cross-country differences in two highly traced outputs, i.e. unemployment rate and job vacancy rate. The regime-based cross-country comparison tests for the existence of a preferred model by searching for a model that systematically outperforms the others.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the existence of a correlation between education and the difficulties the Romanian entrepreneur faces. In order to reach this objective we studied specialized literature, which tried to define the entrepreneur, to identify his/her characteristics, behaviour, education, its importance and the link between the entrepreneur and the level of education. In the case study elaborated within this paper we analyzed quantitative variables, expressed as percentages, which describe the entrepreneur’s level of education and the difficulties he/she faces in relation to obtaining contracts and to supply and demand. The data used are annual; they refer to a period of time between 1995 and 2013 and were collected by the Romanian National Institute for Statistics. We used as analysis instruments both Microsoft Excel 2010 and the SPSS 17 statistics programme (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). We elaborated statistical tests which would confirm or contradict the existence of certain tighter or weaker links between the entrepreneur’s education and the difficulties he/she faces. The results have proven the existence of strong positive correlations between the entrepreneurs who face supply and demand difficulties and the primary, secondary and vocational levels of education. In other words, as the number of entrepreneurs with the above-mentioned levels of education increases, so does the number of entrepreneurs who face supply and demand-related difficulties. Things change when the number of entrepreneurs with high school and university education increases because the number of entrepreneurs who face supply and demand-related difficulties decreases. Limited access to credit, lack of technology and raw materials are not correlated with the entrepreneur’s level of education. Moreover, the increase in education level increases the probability that the entrepreneur face difficulties related to the low market price, the fact that the company is not well-known and lack of marketing skills. This research his useful both from a theoretical viewpoint, and from a practical one, offering an answer with regard to the correlation between education and the difficulties the Romanian entrepreneur faces.

Today public awareness of technical language knowledge and the social demand for related language skills are on the rise, and the Hungarian labour market requires an increasingly competent command of foreign languages from professionals involved in business and economics; compliance with these growing demands is reflected in the nature and structure of teaching foreign languages in the Hungarian higher education institutions Due to the high degree of institutional autonomy each Hungarian university has the right to work out its own language teaching policy and adopt it in its training programme. This paper will show that foreign language study at Hungarian universities can be devoted either to general language or language for specific purposes. These criteria can differ according to the field of study. Given that obtaining a language exam certificate is a pre-requisite of graduation, the role of academic education in providing students with the required knowledge base and successfully preparing them for language exams has become more important. The structure and content of modern business language exams reflect the need to meet the demands of the labour market. There has been a definite shift from grammar-oriented, translation-based tasks towards a more communicative approach which involves testing reading comprehension, writing skills and performance in situational role plays. However, while students generally cope well with understanding written business texts, many of them frequently fail in oral communication. Consequently, the question arises of whether it is possible to bridge the obvious gap between reading and speaking skills. This paper aims to give a possible example of how a descriptive text can be adapted to prepare students for the situational role play tasks in business language exams at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Debrecen