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The paper answers two questions: which innovation capabilities most strongly differentiate CEECs and highly developed European economies and to what extent CEECs’ performance within each of the innovation capabilities has changed over a decade. The research method is based on construction of composite indicators describing national performance within five innovation capabilities in two periods: 1998–2000 and 2010–2012 as well as regression analysis in order to test the accuracy of the main findings. The study has allowed to arrive at a conclusion that CEECs have been able to catch up to highly developed European economies with respect to absorptive capacity related to the existence and use of technological infrastructure as well as participation in inward technology transfer in the form of FDI and capital goods imports. There is, however, a lingering performance gap in new knowledge and innovation creation capabilities and R&D effort. Continuation of this trend and lack of considerable improvement also in terms of absorptive capacity related to the quality of human resources might result in CEECs’ permanent inability to catch up to their highly developed European counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many European countries have used the investment model of Public Private Partnership (PPP, P3 or P3) to implement large-scale infrastructure projects and to accelerate development, but Romania has little experience with such type of projects, although there is a strong economic reason for implementing infrastructure investments, because it can easily be seen the need for investments in this field. This paper is determining the literature review on PPPs, how the regulations of the member states of the European Union is implemented by dedicated PPP units at the national level and, finally, presents the techniques and processes of the contract management. Financing Public Private Partnerships cannot ignore the international economic and financial context. As it could be seen in this paper, the data on PPP market shows that the crisis had a negative impact on their development and implementation at the level of the EU Member States. EU has been promoting PPPs as an important instrument of accomplishing the goals of Europe 2020 strategy. In Romania, the interest in PPPs must be encouraged and the knowledge in this field could increase the administrative capacity of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, the effectiveness of European Cohesion Policy has been evaluated in terms of GDP growth rate. In this paper, we consider the effect of the regional policy in terms of its impacts on two specific fields of intervention, namely 'research, technological development and innovation', and 'transport infrastructure'. Our econometric approach involves the use of a non-parametric regression discontinuity design technique to a uniquely-disaggregated Cohesion Policy dataset broken down according to the specific objectives of each stream of funding. The analysis considers different time intervals and sub-samples. Our results demonstrate a positive impact of Cohesion Policy interventions in these two specific fields of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the determinants of regional economic growth in the European Union adopting a non-parametric approach. Although the local-linear kernel estimator applied does not explicitly take into account the spatial dimension of the data, it is found to be consistent in our context. In addition, the geographically weighted regression turns out to be less efficient. We obtain evidence of a non-linear relationship between regional growth and its determinants in the form of parameter heterogeneity and threshold effects. These non-linearities mainly affect the initial productivity of labour, the human capital endowment and, as a novelty, the level of infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to research conducted by global research teams, sophisticated threat designers are involved in attacking other groups to steal victims' data, borrow tools and techniques, and reuse infrastructure - making information about threats more difficult to detect for cyber security researchers. Exact threat information is based on identifying specific models and tools for a particular author. Such knowledge enables researchers to better identify the aims of offenders, targets and behaviors and help organizations to determine their level of risk. When the authors start attacking each other and take control of instruments, infrastructure, and even victims, this pattern begins to shake. Researchers believe that these attacks are most likely being carried out by state-supported assault groups targeting foreign or less prepared entities. It is important for IT security researchers to learn how to identify and interpret the signals of these attacks so they can put the information in context. The paper aims to bring to the forefront the cybercrime issue and some legal aspects of cybercrime in the European Union (EU). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper contains a presentation of new approaches to solving the problem of identifying critical infrastructure elements in the railway sub-sector. The research objective was to analyse the procedures which are used to identify the potential elements of critical infrastructure in the transportation sector. Specific attention is paid to criteria of methods developed in Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The objective of the work is based on the analysis of the current state of art. The research also attempted to design an effective methodology which allows assessing the significance of rail infrastructure elements. The developed methodology should help to set a group of potential elements of critical infrastructure in the railway sub-sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]