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The paper aims to determine empirically the main motivational factors of Romanian employees using the categorical principal components analysis and to analyze these factors using empirical data from a survey of 300 employees in 2013. The study sought to describe the ranked importance of the following ten motivating factors: (a) job stability, (b) a proper potential salary, (c) opportunities promotion, (d) an attractive benefit package (e) an appropriate logistic package, (f) premiums and bonuses, (g) job attractiveness, (h) job authority, responsibility and autonomy, (i) professional development and (j) job comfort. Analyzing the mean scores of the ten motivational factors, it was pointed out that the factor "job attractiveness " was the most motivating factor for Romanian employees, while "attractive benefit package " was the least motivating aspect, stating that money should not be overestimated as motivating factor. The empirical results of categorical principal component analysis revealed the existence of two components that recover about 94% from the variance of original motivational factors. On the first dimension, all variables have moderate (positive) component loadings, being correlated mainly with job responsibility, professional development, job comfort and job attractiveness. The second dimension is positively correlated mainly with the quantified variables attractive benefit package and promotion. The results of the study highlighted that the money is important, but is not everything in terms of work motivation, suggesting that managers need to focus more on non-financial incentives to better motivate employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of the paper is to analyse the nature of the relationship between Romanian shadow economy as % of official GDP and official economy using two important causality analyses, Granger and Toda-Yamamoto based on quarterly data over the period 2000-2013. The size of the shadow economy as % of official GDP was estimated previously using a special case of the structural equation models-the MIMIC model, recording the value of 40% at the beginning of2000 and following a descendent trend over the analysed period. The Granger causality results revealed the existence of a unidirectional negative causality that runs official economy to the shadow economy, both on long-run and short-run, while Toda-Yamamoto empirical results highlighted the existence of a short-run causality running from official economy to shadow economy at the 1% level of significance. It is important to point out that the results do not support any evidence of causality that runs from shadow economy to official economy. The size of Romanian shadow economy decreases by about 0.6% above the baseline in response to a shock in official economy. So, the shadow economy acts as a macroeconomic buffer for formal sector over the course of business cycles, with informal activities expanding during downturns and contracting during upturns. The empirical results are in line with the studies of Eilat and Zinnes (2000) for 24 transition countries and Kaufmann and Kaliberda (1996) who estimate a negative impact of official GDP on the size of the shadow economy, mentioning that a decline in official GDP, will lead to an increase in the size of the shadow economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]