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The paper evaluates the outcomes of the borrower-based macroprudential policy measures that were introduced in Estonia in 2015. The core of the analysis is the response of the credit market in 2016–2021 to the upper limit on the debt service-to-income ratio for new housing loans. The paper employs a novel data-driven approach based on the distribution of loan-level data, which does not need to account for the changes in the macroeconomic environment, and which allows the analysis to be made under assumptions that are more flexible than those usually used in the literature. The average number of borrowers affected, meaning those who were rejected or got a smaller loan than they wanted, is estimated to be on average around 11 per cent of the total number of new loans, which translates into roughly 10 per cent of the volume of new loans. The effect is fairly stable over the whole period despite the volume of housing loans growing in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• In selective formalization, different informalities are treated unequally. • Digital ambitions of Estonia provided welcoming conditions for ridehailing. • Ridehailing acceptance despite its illegality rests importantly on elite informality. • Frame analysis of governmental debates reveals dominant discursive structures. • Narratives of digital future can legitimize elite informality. The contribution of the paper to the geographical literatures on informalities is to expand the work on transport informalities from transport system reforms and professionalization of informal provisions such as minibus services or taxi provisions to ridehailing, including explicit discursive framings through which formalization operates. Ridehailing platforms have entered various cities around the world extra-legally, forcing public authorities to deal with them. While there is an emerging literature discussing various aspects of ridehailing and platform economies, the literature to date has not analyzed what kinds of discursive frames facilitate the legitimation of these businesses. Analyzing legitimation through frame analysis highlights the affective forcefulness of future visions configured around technology-oriented regulation, employment provision and digitalization. The article argues that the state acceptance of sharing platforms, together with the introduction of the legal framing for them, particularly gains strength from the frame promising digital future. In such policy-framing processes, sharing platforms' extra-legal entry into the market as a form of "elite informality" becomes accepted instead of being considered illegal. This paper analyzes verbatim reports of debates regarding ridehailing legalization held at the Estonian parliament (Riigikogu) in April and September 2016. These verbatim reports represent a key event and arguably the most public part of the trajectory from Uber entering Estonia extra-legally in May 2015 to Estonia introducing the "Uber law" legalizing ridehailing in 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Driving teacher training program was updated towards more constructivist approach. • Updated method: sample lesson videos quantified by web-based speech recognition tool. • Renewed method improved quality of example lessons recorded for final examination. • More constructivist aspects: formulating objectives, open-ended questions, and feedback. • Recent graduates independently utilize more constructivist methodology. Modern learning focuses heavily on theory and ideals, offering scant practical guidance on execution and outcome evaluation. This research paper aims to show that the integration, in 2018, of a contemporary educational approach into the driving teacher training program at Tallinn University, Estonia, with specific implementation and evaluation criteria, changes actual teaching behavior towards constructivist principles. This approach involved a change in which students began video recording their driving lessons and transcribing them using a web-based speech recognition tool while following specific instructions. This process allowed for feedback and self-analysis throughout the learning process. The study analyzed 145 videotaped driving lessons, which were submitted as final examinations in the driving teacher training curriculum at Tallinn University Haapsalu College between 2017 and 2021. The natural quasiexperimental study compared transcripts of recordings (N = 145; 115 males) before (n = 38) and after (n = 107) the methodology change. The findings reveal a significant increase in the implementation of constructivist principles within the lessons after methodology change in 2018: lesson objectives and evaluation criteria were formulated more often, leading to an increase in open-ended inquiries and a higher prevalence of feedback and analysis. Additional pilot analysis of data from 11 driving teacher certificate renewers in a brief education program supported the efficacy of revised approach: the exam lesson recordings exhibited significantly more constructivist elements compared to the initial stage of the program. There were variations in the length of training both pre and post methodology change. While longer training displayed more constructivist elements, the impact of the methodology shift was notably more pronounced. In summary, the utilization of specific expectations, evaluation criteria and assessment tool in the driving teacher training program promotes a shift in which graduating teachers independently use more constructivist and learning-centered methodology. This approach has the potential to shape more responsible drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to shed new light on changes in counter-urbanisation over the past three decades. A specific focus will be placed on new features of domestic migration to non-metropolitan rural areas which have become apparent during the global coronavirus pandemic. We focus on the intensity, origins, and destinations of counter-urban moves, and on the individual characteristics of counter-urban movers. Based on a case study of Estonia, our main findings show, firstly, that urbanisation has been the predominant migration trend across the past thirty years, with the main destination of domestic migrants being the capital city and its urban region. Secondly, we find that counter-urban moves have gained importance over time and especially during the periods of economic bust. The most important new features of counter-urbanisation during the pandemic relate to the increased migration of families with children and people who have high-income occupations to non-metropolitan rural areas. These new features of domestic migration could serve to slow down or even reverse the long-term problem of population aging in the countryside and the loss of educated people there. • Analysis of counter-urbanisation between over the past three decades. • New features of counter-urban moves. • Pandemic has reinforced many long-term trends in counter-urban moves. • Counter-urban moves of families improve the demographic profile of rural areas. • Counter-urban moves of higher-income earners improve the social profile of rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social-ecological fit has been a popular approach to assessing the connectedness between social and ecological systems in environmental governance. However, the role of projects in social-ecological fit has yet to be explicitly problematized and conceptualized. Given the centrality of projects - i.e. temporally limited organizations that bring various actors into collaboration to pursue clearly defined goals and tasks - in environmental governance, this is a serious shortcoming in the literature. In this paper, we fill this gap by drawing on the hitherto unconnected literatures on projectified environmental governance and social-ecological fit. We then assess the extent to which fit can be achieved in projectified environmental governance. To do this, we develop a novel framework for assessing the vertical and horizontal dimensions of social, spatial, and temporal fit and conduct an empirical study of the European Union's LIFE Program and environmental projects funded by the program in Estonia. Our results suggest that the spatial and temporal fit of projects is contingent on social fit, i.e., the alignment of interests and needs of project-related actors. Frictions between various levels of decision-making also condition the possibilities of achieving fit horizontally across stakeholder groups and ecological systems as well as of sustaining project results over time. • Socio-ecological fit is a widely debated topic in environmental governance. • A critical analysis of the role of projects in social-ecological fit is currently lacking. • We explore social-ecological fit of Estonian EU LIFE projects. • The interconnectedness between different forms of fit needs to be addressed. • Pursuing socio-ecological fit is a multi-scale and multi-level effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research proposal explores how citizen-centered learning and career advancement can benefit from artificial intelligence, occupational classification frameworks, and the concept of proactive services. In the current literature, there are a lot of machine learning methods used in various job and training recommendation systems to tackle scientific or real-life problems. However, only a few use the existing occupational classifications to classify job and training advertisements or enable cross-regional labor mobility. Additionally, the quality of public e-services regarding labour market services in each European country varies greatly. For example, even though Estonia is typically referred to as being at the forefront of public service digitization and automation, it has not implemented machine learning methods to match job offers or training with candidates. The matching process between vacancy and job seeker is currently carried out with outdated International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) codes, altered to the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund's needs. The ISCO code is assigned to each job vacancy by a company and job wish by a citizen manually. Such functionality is rigid and requires the users to define an accurate ISCO code. Even when the filled-in CV consists of detailed previous work experience and educational background, if the ISCO code is not accurate, the e-service will not help the citizen find a new job. Moreover, in today's public employment service portals, there is typically no option to insert specific skills that a citizen has to receive an increased number of accurate job or training recommendations. Consequently, despite many well-established frameworks dealing with competencies and occupations, citizen-centered public services supporting upskilling and finding a new job are inefficient. In this paper, we put forth a research roadmap for investigating how to enable a technical ecosystem using occupational classification frameworks so that citizens, both employed and unemployed, can receive proactive recommendations about upcoming training events and job vacancies. Such a system should be tailored to support citizen life events. For example, it could consider citizens' previous work and educational background to help with retraining, upskilling, or changing one's career path. Therefore we have initiated a project in collaboration with the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund, the Estonian Qualifications Authority, other Estonian public organizations, and partner universities in Latvia and Finland. The research is planned as an action design research to design an artificial intelligence-enabled Virtual Competence Assistant (VCA) for the EU labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Countries with the same GDP/cap presented different levels of resource use. • The domestic extraction of natural resources impacted the socioeconomic metabolism. • Low population density was linked to higher levels of resource use per capita. • Economic crisis was particularly impactful in the use of non-metallic minerals. • Services were associated with higher resource productivity. The use of natural resources drives socioeconomic metabolism (SEM) and has been rising as economies develop, but not all countries present the same trends. Understanding how key aspects of the SEM relate to resource use and productivity is critical for promoting sustainable development. This paper analyses 15 years of the SEM dynamics in four European countries by quantifying gross domestic product (GDP) and resource use per capita. The monetary and material flows of Estonia, Croatia, Finland, and the United Kingdom were quantified in monetary and physical input-output tables, enabling the characterization of the flows between the economic sectors and of their cross-correlation indicators, namely through resource productivity. Key findings included the observation of a correlation between high productivity and more developed economies, where infrastructure has been developed for high-productivity services, the effects of economic structure on resource productivity, and on how the SEM developed after an economic recession. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The Taliban opium ban of 2000–2001 disrupted European heroin supplies. • Effects differed across the seven Nordic and Baltic countries in systematic ways. • Some heroin markets bounced back, although perhaps with less vibrancy. • Other markets substituted to another opioid, either more or less harmful. • Market responses to the 2000–2001 ban may be informative for the new, current ban. The 2000–2001 and the 2022–2023 Taliban opium bans were and could be two of the largest ever disruptions to a major illegal drug market. To help understand potential implications of the current ban for Europe, this paper analyzes how opioid markets in seven Baltic and Nordic countries responded to the earlier ban, using literature review, key informant interviews, and secondary data analysis. The seven nations' markets responded in diverse ways, including rebounding with the same drug (heroin in Norway), substitution to a more potent opioid (fentanyl replacing heroin in Estonia), and substitution to one with lower risk of overdose (buprenorphine replacing heroin in Finland). The responses were not instantaneous, but rather evolved, sometimes over several years. This variety suggests that it can be hard to predict how drug markets will respond to disruptions, but two extreme views can be challenged. It would be naive to imagine that drug markets will not adapt to shocks, but also unduly nihilistic to presume that they will always just bounce back with no lasting effects. Substitution to another way of meeting demand is possible, but that does not always negate fully the benefits of disrupting the original market. Nonetheless, there is historical precedent for a European country's opioid market switching to synthetic opioids when heroin supplies were disrupted. Given how much that switch has increased overdose rates in Canada and the United States, that is a serious concern for Europe at present. A period of reduced opioid supply may be a particularly propitious time to expand treatment services (as Norway did in the early 2000s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments across the globe have been actively engaged in pilots aimed at implementing i-voting , which facilitates voting via the internet. I-voting innovations, such as those widely institutionalised in Estonia, Canada, and Switzerland, represent a modernising policy innovation that can increase the convenience of electoral participation and can also safeguard against the temporal suspensions of elections, such as those witnessed in several states during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst the wider implementation of i-voting has made some process, it has received mixed public support, mostly due to fears over its integrity. In this paper, we ask: what features of i-voting attract public support and inspire trustworthiness in its implementation? We answer this using a pre-registered conjoint experiment fielded in the UK, where we derive attributes from a comprehensive systematic review of existing literature and case studies of real-world implementation. Consistent with a rational-choice model of voting, reforms that are more convenient and have substantive reported benefits, specifically reforms that promise increases in participation, enjoy higher support. Electoral integrity remains an important factor in citizens support for, and trust in, i-voting : across the board, i-voting is perceived as less trustworthy than in-person voting, and proposals that may positively influence the risk of fraud are strongly rejected. Against pre-registered hypotheses, we do not find significant subgroup heterogeneity, for instance regarding satisfaction with internet coverage or the current electoral process, nor do we find significant variation based on past levels of engagement with alternative (convenience) options to in-person voting or indeed partisanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Inverse modelling methods are used to identify the source location of undeclared minor releases in 2019, 2020 and 2022. • Calculations suggest that the releases could originate from the same region in Russian Federation. • The most likely origin of the June 2020 release appears to be a primary ion exchange resin of a PWR. New measurement information allows to refine the decay time between 2 and 5 months. • The July 2019 and May 2022 releases contain 46Sc and activated corrosion products, suggesting that the origin of the release is a mixture of various solid wastes, or a recently irradiated graphite of RMBK reactor. Traces of radionuclides have been frequently detected in the European atmosphere for several years. The measured concentrations are usually very low, ranging from 0.1 to 10 μBq m−3, and do not pose any health or environmental problems. This study aims to diagnose the origin of small undeclared radionuclide releases into the atmosphere. An inverse modelling approach that combines environmental measurements and atmospheric transport modelling is first used to assess the source location of the release. In addition, the type and process of the nuclear facility from which the release could originate are investigated by identifying the isotope production pathways and comparing them with known typical inventories. These two parts of the proposed method are complementary and allow us to extract as much information as possible from a set of radionuclide measurement data. In a previous study, the origins of detections of various radionuclides (60Co, 134Cs, 137Cs, 103Ru, 106Ru, 141Ce, 95Nb, 95Zr) in Finland, Sweden and Estonia in June 2020 have been investigated. In this paper, the previous investigation is extended by analysing two additional events that occurred in northern Europe in July 2019 and May 2022, as well an overview of other unknown releases detected in Finland over the last decade. A more detailed analysis of the 2020 event is also provided by analysing new available environmental measurements. The calculations indicate that the source location of the three events appears to be in the same region, in Russian Federation. The most probable origin of the June 2020 release seems to be a primary ion exchange resin, after 2 to 5 months of decay, of a pressurized water reactor with fuel cladding failure, and dispersion of fissile material in the primary. The July 2019 and May 2022 events are of particularly noteworthy due to the simultaneous presence of 46Sc, which is neither produced nor in the fuel, nor in the primary loop of PWR or RBMK nuclear power plants, and typical corrosion-activated products from power plants (60Co). Two hypotheses are proposed to explain this source term: a mixture of various solid wastes or recently irradiated graphite from a RBMK reactor. The reliability of the methodology is demonstrated, in particular in the section dedicated to atmospheric transport modelling, and the successful association with source term analysis provides a valuable tool for future studies and assessments of both minor and major radionuclide releases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What rhetorical strategies are populist far-right parties using to delay regional decarbonization? This paper focuses on three populist far-right parties—the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE), Alternative for Germany (AfD), and Poland's Law and Justice (PiS)—and the discursive-institutional tactics each used from 2014 to 2021 to delay decarbonization of their carbon-intensive regions. We identify three discursive-institutional tactics used by populist far-right actors to delay decarbonization: (1) politicizing decarbonization, (2) reframing cultural values to form alliances with anti-decarbonization movements, and (3) dismantling key decarbonization institutions. We show that the populist far-right discursive-institutional tactics in European regional decarbonization are prevalent and vary widely. The politics of backlash against the EU-driven progressive public policies and anti-democratic rhetoric, including xenophobia and national sovereignty discourses are commonly used by these three populist far right parties to mobilize counternarratives against climate change and regional decarbonization. EKRE and PiS typically portray themselves as the protectors of social insurance and safety for vulnerable groups affected by regional decarbonization. PiS and AfD harness regional identity to mobilize civic engagement against decarbonization. All three parties work to empty and dismantle key decarbonization institutions. Overall, our findings suggest that carbon-intensive regions are particularly susceptible to the discursive tactics and institutional work of populist far-right parties, and may therefore provide opportunities for these parties to constrain decarbonization more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Wind damage severity and salvage logging affected understory species composition. • Salvaged stands had greatest canopy openness and lowest microsite richness. • Salvage logging did not reduce species richness nor diversity. • Moderately disturbed stands had highest variation regarding species composition. • Resilience after wind disturbance was faster in non-salvaged areas. The herbaceous understory is a key component of forest biodiversity. Moreover, it holds the capability to alter the dynamics and composition of the overstory. Severe wind disturbance changes the conditions in a forest ecosystem radically, causing alteration of understory characteristics as well. In this paper we analyze impacts of different storm damage levels and post-storm management on understory vegetation richness, diversity and composition in mixed spruce–hardwood forest stands located in hemiboreal Estonia. We examined understory vegetation in moderately damaged (n = 4), heavily damaged (n = 4) and post-storm salvage-logged stands (n = 4) 19–20 years after storm disturbance. Mature mixed spruce–hardwood forests were included as a reference group (n = 4). Study plots were also assessed regarding canopy openness, richness of microhabitats and coverage of woody species. A total of 98 herbaceous and 2 dwarf shrub taxa were found on 208 vegetation quadrats (1 m2 square each). Total coverage of the herb layer and species richness were greatest at salvage-logged plots when compared to other treatments. However, we found no significant effect of treatment on diversity (Shannon's H') nor evenness (Pielou's index) of herbaceous species. Our results indicate that approximately-two decades after wind disturbance, the understory communities differ from each other as a response to different storm damage levels and post-storm management. Compared to control plots, salvage-logged plots demonstrated greatest contrast regarding species composition. Salvage-logged plots had greatest light levels, but lowest estimates for microsite richness and woody species coverage. Moderately damaged plots demonstrated greatest within-group variation regarding light conditions and species composition. Our findings suggest that salvage logging after severe wind disturbance might induce delayed succession toward a closed canopy due to intense understory competition and lack of opportunity-providing microhabitats for tree regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift from carbon-intensive to low-carbon energy systems has profound justice implications as some regions are likely to lose as much as gain from decarbonization processes. Increasing calls have been made to adopt a 'whole systems' perspective on energy justice. Drawing on the Multi-level Perspective on socio-technical transitions this paper presents a new comprehensive framework of energy justice in system innovation, proposing to map injustices along three dimensions: 1) multiple spatial scales (regional, national, international); 2) different time horizons (currently experienced vs. anticipated injustices); 3) connections to transition dynamics (injustices related to the optimization of the currently dominant system, destabilization of the incumbent system or the acceleration of alternative solutions in niches). The framework is applied to analyse the ongoing energy transition in Estonia, involving interactions between the incumbent oil shale based regime and wind, solar, nuclear and bioenergy as emerging niche challengers. The content analysis of news items in Estonian media reveals an inventory of 214 distinct incidents of energy injustices across 21 different categories. We find that many experienced and anticipated injustices are deployed, often strategically, by certain actors to advocate specific energy futures and to influence current political choices. From the justice perspective our analysis thus raises a question whether it is ethical to use probable yet currently unrealized injustices related to regime destabilization and niche acceleration as a means to perpetuate injustices related to the optimization of the currently dominant regime. • Proposes a multi-scalar and multi-horizon mapping tool for energy injustice. • Connects injustices to transition dynamics and proposes 3 basic types of injustice: • Regime optimization, regime destabilization and niche acceleration injustices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]