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The main research aim is to investigate and test the long-term existence of a balanced relationship (cointegration) between business demographics and economic growth, expressed in terms of real GDP per capita, and to estimate the econometric models expressing relationships between analyzed variables in European economy. Our The study has focused on ten out of the eleven former communist countries, currently members of the European Union, during the 2006–2016 time period. Croatia was left out due to the shortness of the time series available for it, that the study would have required. These findings have significant implications in designing and shaping the future business models in European former communist countries, and increase convergence. The results obtained confirm the existence of long-term balanced relationships between the variables examined, the forms of which however vary from one cluster of states to another. Keywords: business demography, business churn, convergence, econometric methods, economic growth, European economic model, GDP, Hierarchic Cluster methodology, SMEs.

European agriculture is the result and experiences of a numerous and md determinant reforms during last period of time. Labor productivity and green gas emissions represents two major turning points in analyzing the Common Agricultural Policy evolution. The main aim of this research is to make a synoptic analysis of the agriculture evolution in context of the new Common Agricultural Policy paradigm transformation from the perspective of sectorial structural changes determined by the new environmental exigencies and labor productivity.

The volumes are dedicated to the 30th anniversary of "Costin C. Kiritescu" National Institutefor Economic Research and its research network of the return under the aegis of the Romanian Academy. The NIER’s network of incorporated research institutes and centers under its scientific coordination include the Institute of National Economy, the Institute of Economic Forecasting, the Institute of Agricultural Economics, the Research Institute for Quality of Life, the Institute of World Economy, the Centre of Industry and Services Economics, the Centre for Financial and Monetary Research, the Centre for Studies and Research on Agricultural and Forest Biodiversity and the Centre for Economic Information and Documentation. Also, under NIER’s umbrella six unincorporated research entities are set up: the Centre for Complex Research, the Romanian Centre for Comparative Economics and Consensus, the Centre for Macroeconomic Modelling, the Centre for Demographic Research, the Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency and the Centre for Mountain Economics.

Although the European business environment induces important premises and assures conditions in determining economic growth and social well-being, the determinant and existent connections between the evolution of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), business demography characteristics and the European socio-economic model have been scarcely studied in recent years. The dimensions of the European socio-economic model design a very specific framework in developing business demography and assuring a favorable environment for future SME development. The main aim of the manuscript is to investigate the evolution of the European SMEs sector and the perspective of business demography evolution to converge with exigencies of the European socio-economic model. In order to argue the research objective, eight specific and representative business demography variables were employed, from 12 European Union member states (EU-MS), during 2009–2017. Further, the SMEs’ performances, determined by changing the economic functional paradigm, were assessed. For proving this, an econometric model was designed considering labor productivity as an endogenous variable. Our preliminary analysis shows considerable differences in business demography indicators and SMEs development among all five socio-economic sub-models of the main European socio-economic model, proving a tight connection between European socio-economic models and SMEs’ performance and arguing the necessity of a paradigm convergence. Within some sub-models, there is clear evidence of clustering and convergence in terms of business demography and SMEs future development.

Analysing the impact of agricultural performance on foreign trade concentration and competitiveness defines an important step in identifying the opportunities, challenges and proactive measures in designing a functional and marked based agricultural model. The scope of this study is to investigate the evolution of Romania’s the foreign trade competitiveness and its concentration on main destinations during 2007–2016. In this context, in the paper are identified and investigated some of the competitiveness’ mutations arisen from the Romania’s trade flows concentration and restructuration in relation with 26 of the European Union member states. It was used a unique dataset on agro -food trade output and concentration across EU countries to construct measures of trade competitiveness. The results obtained suggest the existence of a dual relationship of the Romanian agriculture competitiveness and its dependence on the EU economic area, by the concentration of the commercial relationships.

This study proposes an assessment of the regional agricultural efficiency convergence potential across the Romanian development regions during a period of sixteen years (from 2001 to 2017). Using the Cobb-Douglas function and the cluster analysis, it investigates the agricultural development and efficiency in the development regions of Romania, based on the available official datasets. The main aim of the research is to appraise the potential of these seven development regions (Bucharest – Ilfov Region was excluded), and to understand the differences between them, from the perspective of agriculture’ future, and the impact agriculture can have on the sustainable development of each region, through a new domestic agricultural paradigm. The results suggest that agriculture has a major impact on the development of a region as a whole, and that, in the absence of future reform measures in agriculture, the regions will be highly affected by their agricultural underperformance.

In the long evolutionary course of human civilisation, the past two centuries have been characterised by the theory of industrialisation. After 1990, a new reality gave birth to the opposite term: deindustrialisation. The primordial foundation underlying the development of industry in the 20th century, and particularly in its mid-third, was the manufacturing of metal, and especially steel. Following the two shock-waves in 1973 and 1978, when rocketing prices shook the oil industry, the production of steel reversed its trend in the majority of the developed countries, and mostly in the European Union member states, where, after 1990, steel production had a much lower, or, sometimes, a negative, rate of growth. This was paralleled by a growing volume of the trade in scrap iron. Encouraged by the generous principle of free circulation of products, such a trade seems, however, to be in contradiction with the principles of sustainable development, reduction of carbon emissions, and energy saving, promoted by the EU.

This article dwells on a local specificity with apparently little interest for the European construction, but which we deem to be on at least an equal footing in importance with the issues of monetary, budget, and fiscal coordination: the effects of wage gaps between the EU member states. The data and information considered for the writing of this article indicate that, although the gap seems to be diminishing, the still wide differences between member countries have led (and continue to do so) to major consequences in terms of competition and competitive edge in their domestic markets, to imbalances in their budgets, fiscal, and labour policies, but also in the quality of their citizens’ lives.

In the past 23 years, Romania has gone through a thorough and multi - facetted economic, institutional, legal, and ownership restructuring process, which has greatly reshaped the landscape of its economy, by changing the place and the role of certain economic branches, activities and companies, the drastic effects of which have also left a mark on its industrial structures. This article approaches the restructuring of the Romanian industry in respect of the number, size, and ownership of the companies, the changes in the value structure of industrial output by groups of products and branches, the course followed by physical production expressed in physical units, the number of employees, the salaries, and wage costs. Our analysis tackles the process of decomposition and recomposition of Romania's industrial structures from a national perspective, without ignoring the trends in the European industrial strategies and policies.

The main purpose of this study is to demonstrate the effect the reforms undertaken in the Romanian agriculture have had upon the revenues and the competitive edge of Romanian farmers. While, statistically speaking, the social and economic structures of Romania and the other EU member countries appeared to display a certain degree of convergence along some four decades towards the end of the previous century, the indicators of the past two decades reveal a wide gap between Romania and the EU countries, the fact being indicative of the existence now of economic, technical and institutional asymmetries and divergences, rather than convergences. At present, Romanian agriculture and Romanian farmers are at a strong disadvantage from their European counterparts in respect of competitiveness. In Romania, the economic and institutional mechanisms created over the past twenty years have most often favoured subsistence farming, leaving the door open to the added value to migrate to other sectors, which was to the detriment of agricultural production.

The boom of world trade, the unprecedented openness of domestic markets, regional integration, and the persistence and magnitude of globalisation are as many challenges to the management of the internal balance between revenues and expenditures, both in the context of international, regional, national, and company mechanisms, and for the individual households and consumers. The coexistence of foreign deficits/trade and domestic deficits/ budget at macro level, at the same time with the accumulation of high levels of indebtedness of the states, non-financial corporate entities, and individual households requires, in the context of the present global financial crisis, new theoretical and practical approaches, new institutions, and new policies capable to secure the sustainability of growth, and to diminish the risk of increasingly unpredictable disturbances.