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This study evaluates the economic performance of plastics manufacturers in European regions (e.g., Western, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Baltic States) between 2017 and 2020 based on data from 3,372 companies using multivariate correspondence analysis (MCA) and Welch’s test. They were analyzed according to the indicators of profitability, sales (or turnover), employment, and total assets. The results of MCA show that Central and Eastern European companies are absolute leaders in terms of profitability. While Southern European companies have the highest total assets, their sales and profitability are lower compared to other regions. We found that Western European companies lead in terms of turnover and that the Baltic region is roughly on par with Central and Eastern European countries in terms of profitability and employment. These differences were also tested using the pairwise Welch’s test, which revealed highly statistically significant differences, especially in turnover and total assets. The results also show that profitability levels are similar regardless of company size, while sales and total assets are significantly different across European regions. These findings on plastics manufacturers in different European regions are crucial to help policymakers and industry leaders make informed decisions to address economic performance, investment and environmental concerns, and to develop sustainable solutions for the plastics industry.

One of the key challenges for businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic has been to maintain financial sustainability despite the public crisis and consumer demand shocks. While some companies have managed to digitize and cope with the new realities, others have not. This will determine the future of companies and the direction of anti-crisis tools in management strategies. The purpose of this study is to analyze the use of digitalization as an anti-crisis tool among Azerbaijani businesses during the Covid-19 outbreak. The data set is based on voluntary survey data gathered from key businesses of the Azerbaijan economy. Our analysis applied k-means clustering, the related-samples Wilcoxon Signed Rank test and the independent-samples Mann-Whitney U test to learn whether there was any connection between digitalization and financial sustainability. Our findings indicate that 42% of the businesses that participated in the study obtained benefits by using digitalization as a crisis management tool during the Covid-19 pandemic period, but 38% of the respondents did not report any significant changes in their businesses despite increased digitalization efforts. Moreover, 20% of the businesses examined experienced negative changes after digitalization. The results of the independent-samples Mann-Whitney U test indicated that those businesses that had high scores before and after the increased digitalization efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic, achieved higher median profits, while the businesses with lower scores experienced a financial loss. As can be seen from the results, the chances of benefiting from digitalization are rather uncertain for local businesses. The main policy conclusion from this study is that businesses in Azerbaijan need to address the digitization challenge comprehensively to increase benefits and reduce costs. The results of our study are useful for business owners, policy makers, and top managers when developing strategies for enterprise-level digitization, especially during and after viral outbreaks.

Azerbaijan has an oil-led economy, which according to the well-known resource curse and Dutch disease hypotheses decreases the role of non-oil tradable sectors. Nevertheless, the government has actively fostered the growth of non-oil tradable sectors as the export orientation of Azerbaijan is being leveraged by the recently adopted economic policies. However, performance evaluations at the subsectoral level remain rare. The present paper evaluates the performance of the fruit and vegetable subsectors in Azerbaijan from 1995 to 2020 based on multiple key indicators, such as production, profitability, and productivity via principle component analysis (PCA). The purpose of the study was to provide a comparison of two key subsectors in Azerbaijan that are strong candidates for non-oil tradable exports. The results revealed that the vegetable subsector outperformed the fruit subsector in terms of production and profitability from 1999 to 2014; however, it experienced a sharp decline from 2014 to 2015 (the period of the rapid commodity price downturns), which gives rise to the question of whether the extractive industry negatively affected the subsector. Compared to the vegetable subsector, production and profitability in the fruit subsector demonstrated a more stable upward trend. In addition, labor input in both sub-sectors decreased over time, indicating efficiency gains via new technology transfers and productivity enhancements. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) results demonstrated a strong and statistically significant negative relationship between the performance of the vegetable subsector with the oil revenue boom period (2008–2015).