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The 2019 PBC document views relationships between parents and children, masters and servants, “shepherds” and “the flock,” civil authority and citizens as asymmetric. The structure of the document suggests that these relationship systems are based on shared human experience and a common theological foundation: they appear to repeat the pattern of the parent-child relationship and originate in the obligation to obey God. Using the document as a starting point, I would like to outline what the concept of asymmetric relationships can mean today. In search of common perspectives, I will compare New Testament texts with the interpretation of asymmetry in today’s social ethics discourse. The inequality and asymmetry of different persons and groups seem to be an undeniable fact, causing tension that can be resolved fruitfully by parties who take responsibility for each other in the presence of a “third.”

The escape of prisoners of war is a personal experience, not measurable with statistics only, as the decision to flee is, partly at least, irrational and/or due to the prisoner’s subjective perception of captivity. This paper examines the extraordinarily well documented case of the attempted escape by an Austro-Hungarian officer in 1916, trying to discover what moved prisoners to escape, how this phenomenon was managed by Italian authorities and judged by the general public.

Humanitarian aid as it is meant today (i.e. transnationally-coordinated, state-subsidized and carried out by volunteers), first came into being during WWI and its aftermath. Relief actions carried out by the Entente powers in the countries of the former Central Empires averted an humanitarian disaster but were also a mean to further politic and economic agendas. This paper focuses on the assistance that Italy gave to Hungary in 1919-1920 as a possible early attempt at economic expansion in that country.

Groundwater knowledge and research in the European Union is often scattered and non-standardised, because of different subjects involved and different approaches from Member States. The Horizon2020 project KINDRA has conducted an EU-wide assessment of existing groundwater-related practical and scientific knowledge based on a new Hydrogeological Research Classification System, identifying more than 280 keywords related to three main categories (namely Operational Actions, Research topics and Societal Challenges) to be intersected in a 3D-diagram approach. The classification is supported by a web-service, the European Inventory of Groundwater Research, which acts not only as knowledge repository but also as a tool to help identify relevant research topics, existing research trends and critical research challenges. The records have been uploaded during the project by 20 national experts from National Associations of Geologists, under the umbrella of the European Federation of Geologists. The total number of metadata included in the inventory at the end of the project are about 2300, and the analysis of the results is considered useful for producing synergies, implementing policies and optimising water management in Europe. By the use of additional indicators, the database content has been analysed by occurrence of keywords, type of document, level of innovation. Using the three-axes classification, more easily understandable by 2D diagrams as bubble plots, occurrence and relationship of different topics (main categories) in groundwater research have been highlighted. This article summarizes the activities realized in relation to the common classification system and to the metadata included in the EIGR, showing the distribution of the collected information in different categories and attributes identified by the classification.

Funding gaps occur when for a particular group of enterprises there are not enough available funds to finance their growth. Such enterprises are typically young, innovative and technology-oriented startup companies. These companies do not have significant revenues or collaterals; hence they are not suitable for bank financing. On the other hand the information problems decrease their chances to attract investors and also there is high uncertainty involved in these companies. The method of venture capital financing was established to operate in this financing gap and to provide funds for these technology-oriented, young startup enterprises. There is an extensive literature that highlights that venture capitalists are capable and willing to provide financing for these enterprises as a result of their special expertise and business experience and their sophisticated value creation methods. In this article the authors introduce a real options reasoning in order to give an interpretation of venture capital decision-making method and why venture capital is willing to operate in funding gaps and how it is able to bridge them. With the involvement in the operation of the invested companies venture capitalists create options that increase the value of the firm. Also in option-valuation the higher the uncertainty of the asset is, the higher the value of the option is. That is the reason, why other passive funding forms reject the financing of startup enterprises, while venture capital is willing to provide funds for them. In this article we will describe the problem of funding gaps, than we will introduce real options and their effect on investment decision. In the last part of the article we will demonstrate how real options appear and are created in venture capital financing as a result of its special characteristics and how the real options approach can explain the ability of venture capitalist of bridging funding gaps.

The integration of persons with disabilities and with reduced work capacity in the labour market represents one of the biggest challenges for labour market policies. The non-integration of disabled people in the labour market causes huge costs for the countries’ economy. The European Union’s aim is to transform passive social support into active support by means of labor market policy measures, to help people to obtain gainful employment and to raise employment levels of people with disabilities and with reduced work capacities. Earlier this target group has to work in the sheltered employment. But it changed from the 90’s years because of the social model of disability definition. Nowadays the main goal to help this target group integrates in the open employment. The members of European Union imagine this aim on other way. The Scandinavian countries or England prefer the equal opportunities and the personalised mainstreaming programmes and services. Other European countries, as Germany, Austria or Italy prefer the rehabilitation quota system. Thus, the labor force participation and employment rates for people with disabilities and with reduced working capacities are strong differences between the European countries. But lot of other options also influence the member of countries’ policy and employment system. Since the Amsterdam Treaty the European Union has devoted exceptional attention to the equal opportunities of disabled people, the enforcement of equal treatment, and the reduction of the dangers of discrimination, as it is, a significant part of persons with disabilities and reduced work capacity do not have a full-time job, they become unemployed two or three times more frequently than their abled-counterparts, and dispose of lower salary, therefore they need the help of their family and the community. This study examines the Italian situation. It bases on statistics on the Italian target group and provides comparisons with people without disabilities, Italian and international studies, researches. Applying a secondary research method, it aims at discussing the labour market and employment characteristics of target group. The research shows the people with disabilities and with reduced working capacities’ labor force participation and employment rate, as well as the labor forces institutional services in Italy.

This paper focuses on the returns of two segments of Private Equity (PE) market in Europe and in the US; Venture Capital (VC) and Buyout (BO). Contrary to the publicly traded stocks where information about the trade of securities is public, the measuring of the returns of these asset classes is not unambiguous. The returns of PE investments are considered as confidential information therefore we only have estimations about the real characteristics of the financial performance of the PE industry. Although it is impossible to observe the whole industry it is important to chart its performance because PE plays an essential role in the financing of firms, especially firms at special stages of their lives and the more information the investors and companies have, the more effective PE market can be therefore it can contribute to economic growth, employment, innovation etc. In the literature PE, VC and BO are not distinguished properly and they are often used as synonyms. Despite their similarities, there are significant differences in the features of these types of investments. In this paper the authors present the return characteristics of the PE industry of Europe and the US with regard to the stage-focus of PE funds. The key findings of this paper are that in average the returns of BO funds exceeded the returns of VC funds in the US as well as in Europe. Not just according to the absolute value of the returns, but also according to its risk-return tradeoff BO seems to be a preferable investment. The same statements can be made in case of the European market. The US returns are higher than European VC returns, because compared to the US VC industry the European is undeveloped. On the other hand the gap between the performances of BO funds is not as significant as the difference of VC funds. While in the 90’s US BO funds outperformed the European ones, after the millennia European BO returns were higher. The analysis of returns reveals the sensitivity of these asset classes to economic cycles. The ‘dotcom’ boom of the millennia affected greatly the PE industry as well as the recession of 2008. The first section of this article describes the different subsets of PE, than it shows the differences in terms of returns of the US and European market, than in the third part the paper compares the characteristics of the different classes of PE.

JEREMIE (Joint European Resources for Micro to Medium Enterprises) program was implemented as a part of the EU cohesion policy in the framework of 2007-2013 programming period. The primary objective of the program was to enhance the financing prospects of SME’s through structural funds that provide financial engineering instruments like loan, guarantee and venture capital. This paper focuses on the effects of JEREMIE on Hungary’s venture capital market. Since 2010, 28 JEREMIE backed venture capital funds were founded in four rounds and 130 billion HUF capital was allocated into these funds with the contribution of Hungarian government. A well-established venture capital market can boost entrepreneurship and innovation, therefore economic growth which is the foundation of government involvement. On the other hand, there is an extensive literature highlighting the limits and possible drawbacks of the active role of public sector in the venture capital market. There is a consensus in the literature that in the long run the extensive role of government in venture capital industry is counterproductive. Substituting market participants by government agencies will hardly result in a competitive and efficient market. However, temporarily as a catalyst public sector can contribute to the development of venture capital market. Direct government intervention supportable temporarily only in the infancy of the industry. The primary objective of every program must be to develop the market to the level where it becomes self-sustaining. This way the success of these programs must not be measured only by the amount of invested capital, financial performance of venture capital funds and venture capital backed companies. Raising private sector awareness and the progress of necessary institutions are also the criteria of a successful program. During the design and implementation of venture capital agendas these aspects must be taken into consideration. This paper aims for evaluating how successful JEREMIE program is in enhancing the development of venture capital industry.

The importance of estimation of a firm's probability of default increased significantly during the economic and financial crisis for financial institutions, which can be explained by the fact that the share of nonperforming loans increased in this period. The probability of default can be estimated with structural models, which have on base the methodology developed by Merton (1974), methodology used by Moody's Corporation (known as KMV Merton model). The aim of this study is to estimate the probability of default of companies listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange using this methodology. This approach was widely used in the literature by many researchers (i.e., Kealhofer and Kurbat (2000), Crosbie and Bohn (2002), Duffie and Wang (2004), Bharath and Shumway (2004, 2008)). In Romania this methodology was empirically tested by Codirlaşu (2007), who estimated using Merton's methodology the probability of default of companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, respectively by Bobircă et al. (2008), where the probabilities of default were estimated in case of 42 companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange for 2000-2008 time period. In this paper we used Merton's model, which assumes that a company defaults if the value of its assets is less than the promised dept repayment at time T. The process of estimating the probability of default starts from the following firm specific variables: the market value of the firm's assets, the share prices, the value of the liabilities and the risk-free rate. The analyzed period is 2003-2010, containing the economic and financial crisis period, too. Analyzing the financial statements of the companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, we determined the input parameters of the model and calculated the quarterly probabilities of default of each analyzed company. According to our results the probabilities of default have a reduced value in the majority of the cases.