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Similar to ecosystems, socioeconomic systems, economies embedded in the environment, are characterized by their own metabolism which uses energy and material flows to maintain and reproduce itself. Sustainable socioeconomic systems require eco-efficiency. The European Commission’s ‘green’ approach to corporate social responsibility is that companies are responsible for their impact on society and the natural environment and also for the behavior of their business partners. For socioeconomic survival analysis it is imperative to mention that together with the beneficial aspects of ‘greening’ industrial activity (supporting increasing levels of global consumption under the ‘economic growth’ development paradigm) are packaged great risks. This paper discusses the need for ecoefficiency, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and eco-innovation, bearing in mind the risks that transnational value chains could bring for the less developed countries. The case of Romania’s eco-innovation performance over the years is discussed.

Two key issues that shape the economic development and growth of a country are the independence and effectiveness of the judicial system and the level of bureaucracy. The theory of transaction costs, developed, among others, by Douglass C. North, explores both. Increasing the independence and effectiveness of the judicial system reduces corruption and protects private property and economic freedom while reducing bureaucracy is absolutely necessary to increase a country's competitiveness by lowering the cost and increasing the speed of transactions. This paper introduces the transaction costs approach, the concept of ‘socioeconomic/societal metabolism’ and takes advantage of the Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) to examine how the ‘socioeconomic/societal metabolism’ could be impacted.

Poverty and economic growth are interconnected research fields via the standard concept ‘human capital’ and in modern societies their analysis is intertwined. In the past decades, more and more research has considered modern economies as complex systems embedded in the biosystem. Under this assumption, scenario analysis based on the concept of socioeconomic metabolism is used to complement more traditional forecasting methods. Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) is developed on the framework of Georgescu-Roegen’s 'flow-fund' model of production and it characterizes socioeconomic systems as metabolic systems. In the context of this novel approach, concepts like bio-economic pressure enable scenario analysis for the evolution of the whole or partial socioeconomic system. The Human Activity Fund is a concept central to the socioeconomic metabolic flow-fund framework and it is related, besides human capital, to one of the newest sources of inequality, namely the ‘digital divide’. The digital divide is a result of the IT Revolution and recent research has associated it with the ‘rewiring of the human brain’. This paper introduces the concept of human capital and presents some of the measures employed in the literature. It also investigates the possible change, due to the digital divide, in the metabolic pattern of a society associated with ‘quality’ changes of the Human Activity Fund through demographic structure or poverty pattern alterations. The ‘internet illiteracy’ indicator is used as a first step to investigate the connection between the MuSIASEM concept Human Activity Fund and the standard concept Human Capital.

In modern times, in the context of an increasingly quantitative approach to economics, welfare has been related mostly to an economic actor’s income. With increasing complexity in social and economic life, studies moving beyond the income approach to welfare enriched economic literature. Modelling the economic concept of ‘happiness’ is one of the new ways to design welfare policy. Even if it has been shown, using econometric techniques, that an accurate measurement of the true welfare effects is not possible, researchers estimated, for example, the income required for a typical individual in different countries to ascertain the same change, due to various events, in declared happiness as in welfare. This paper introduces the concept of happiness as one of the measures of well-being in economics and presents a brief survey of the literature on this topic.

Social services are designed to alleviate the risks individuals are facing due to poverty and, on a larger scale, to reduce the anthropogenic impact on the environment (through disturbed interconnections with the environment). Four types of social services of general interest are discussed in this paper for two groups of EU countries: four new EU-members and post-socialist countries (Hungary and Poland are EU-members since 2004, while Romania and Bulgaria since 2007) versus UK and Ireland (the ‘liberal’ state-model and the ‘Celtic tiger’ or the overlapping of the 'liberal' state with the 'corporatist' state). In addition, the link between social services and the distribution of income inequality is analysed for elders and active people. From a different perspective, social services offered through ‘social enterprises’ in some of the European models and in the US are compared. Finally, the ‘IT’ rise is connected to Smart Social Services.

In a changing world, the development of eco-sustainable tourism is manifested in the form of interaction of elements compatible with each other in various dimensions: economic, environmental, human, technological, environmental, ethical, etc. Through eco-sustainable tourism aims to satisfy the present needs of tourists in favor and not in detrimental to the interests of future generations, along with educating them in the spirit of reducing negative environmental impacts. This paper provides a brief overview of the tourism - ecology - sustainable development relationship, by highlighting the evolutionary theoretical considerations regarding the concept of tourism, the need for sustainable tourism development, the ecology as a priority in the development and integration of tourism activities within the coordinates the eco-sustainable development. It also discusses the main indicators used to characterize the tourism activities in Romania in the context of eco-sustainable development.

Poverty and well-being are concepts that cannot be separated, and research on poverty is implicitly linked to welfare economics. Poverty, in the complex conditions of modern societies affected by financial and economic crises, requires a clear definition and measures as accurate as possible. The paper presents some issues related to official methods and techniques for estimating poverty. Three steps necessary for poverty measurement are introduced and, also, multidimensional and poverty dynamics analyses are highlighted as important issues for poverty eradication policies. Results on youth poverty dynamics, the duration and recurrence of poverty and the perpetuation of poverty in EU countries are presented. The concepts of poverty risk, as well as some results of the search for key factors influencing the likelihood of being at risk of poverty, is discussed. Traditionally the living standard of households is measured by income, but recently other tools for measuring well-being in the broader framework of postmodern societies have been developed. As examples are some experimental methods and techniques for estimating poverty introduced in the U.S. and the European Union. Also, in the context of discussions related to the design of policies for sustainable development, some aspects of well-being measures in ecological economics are presented.

For young people, the transition from education to employment is an important process. This process can varysignificantly among different countries and national systems depending on the duration and nature of the transition, thelevel and persistence of youth unemployment, on the types of jobs and contracts obtained by young people.Young people’s decision to either enter the labor market and become economically active or to further theireducation depends on many factors including: their motivation to continue studying, the financial means at their disposal,cultural motivation, the general socio-economic context and labor market situation.In Romania, in the last decade, employment rate for young people decreased; in 2011 it reached 23.8% (4.9percentage points less than in 2000, and 1 percentage point lower compared to 2008 ). Analysis of youth employment ratesby region shows significant regional discrepancies. The economic downturn has resulted in a more pronounced reductionin the employment rate of young women compared to same age men.This paper presents a brief characterization of the labor market in South-West Oltenia Region compared to thelabor market in other Romanian regions. Key indicators of youth labor market in South-West Oltenia Region andemployment rates, unemployment rates by residence and sex disparities are also analyzed.