Eastern European Union Countries Research Articles

Disparities of Central and Eastern European Countries of European Union in innovation potential: A multi-criteria assessment

The primary objective of the article is to evaluate the innovation potential of Central and Eastern European Union countries. The Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution method was employed to assess and rank this potential. The research was based on 10 indicators that characterize the main areas related to innovation, namely intellectual capital (as a measure of social innovative capacity), financial capital (as a measure of the potential for financing research and development) as well as research and innovation activities. Three objective approaches were used to calculate weights of these evaluation criteria (in the TOPSIS method): Shanon–Entropy, criteria importance through intercriteria correlation and equal weights. As a evaluate of the level of innovation potential of studied CEE countries between 2013 and 2022, the determined values of the Innovation Potential Index were used to evaluate the studied countries and divide them into four groups. With the use of the two non-parametric test, the relationships of this index with selected parameters were also measured. The research results show that the innovation potential level of CEE countries is highly differentiated. Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Estonia, countries investing in R&D and social development, were found to have a high level of innovation. The remaining countries need to take more decisive action in the areas studied to improve their level of innovation. The methodology developed for the research, the conducted study, and the resulting findings offer opportunities to analyze the indicators and areas studied, and through this to implement strategies for building an innovative knowledge-based economy both by the countries in question and the EU as a whole.

Exploring the Intrinsic Factors Influencing Return on Assets: A Case Study of the Hotel Industry in Selected EU Countries

Purpose: The main aim of this study was to determine the intrinsic factors (total equity, trade receivable turnover, working capital turnover, long term debt, current ratio, debt to total assets ratio, debt to equity ratio, net sales revenue trend, total operating revenue trend, shareholders' equity trend, cash to total assets, current liabilities to total liabilities) that influence the financial performance of the Hotel Industry in select Central and Eastern European Union countries. Return on Assets (ROA) was used in this study as measure of financial performance. Design/methodology/approach: The paper uses panel data fixed effects model to examine dependent variable ROA as measure of the financial performance of select Tourism and Leisure Industry companies from Central and Eastern EU member states. The intrinsic factors were applied as independent variables. The applied panel data fixed effects model in the study was utilised to determine the impact of the intrinsic factors on financial performance. The data were obtained from EMIS data base. Overall data encompassed 614 companies from select eight Central and Eastern EU member states for the period 2015-2022. Findings: The model performed in this study discovered that intrinsic factors including total equity, trade receivable turnover, current ratio, debt to total assets ratio, as well as cash to total assets had a significant impact on the ROA. Total equity, current ratio, cash to total assets have positive impact as opposed to the trade receivable turnover debt to total asset, while years 2020 and 2021 had negative impact on the ROA. Research limitations/implications: This study was limited just on the select eight central and eastern European Union countries; moreover, the database EMIS used for this study lacks certain variables that are frequently used in similar studies. Result confirmed the importance of intrinsic factors and their influence on the financial performance of the leisure industry. Originality/value: This study contributes to the existing body of theory on financial performance through research on the new practitioners’ perception of the intrinsic factors relative to financial performance. There are very few empirical studies which examine financial performance variables in the Central and Eastern European leisure industry. Consequently, this study aims to bridge the gap between the available literature and body of research.

Cancer burden in adolescents and young adults in Europe

Cancer epidemiology is unique in adolescents and young adults (AYAs; aged 15-39 years). The European Society for Medical Oncology/European Society for Paediatric Oncology (ESMO/SIOPE) AYA Working Group aims to describe the burden of cancers in AYAs in Europe and across European Union (EU) countries. We used data available on the Global Cancer Observatory. We retrieved crude and age-standardised (World Standard Population) incidence and mortality rates. We reported about AYA cancer burden in Europe and between 28 EU member states. We described incidence and mortality for all cancers and for the 13 cancers most relevant to the AYA population. Incidence and mortality varied widely between countries with the highest mortality observed in Eastern EU countries. Cancers of the female breast, thyroid and male testis were the most common cancers across countries followed by melanoma of skin and cancers of the cervix. Variations in cancer incidence rates across different populations may reflect different distribution of risk factors, variations in the implementation or uptake of screening as well as overdiagnosis. AYA cancer mortality disparities may be due to variation in early-stage diagnoses, different public education and awareness of cancer symptoms, different degrees of access or availability of treatment. Our results highlight the future health care needs and requirements for AYA-specialised services to ensure a homogeneous treatment across different countries as well as the urgency for preventive initiatives that can mitigate the increasing burden.

Health insurance for the good European citizen? Migrant sex workers' quests for health insurance and the moral economy of health care.

European health insurance systems have become increasingly fragmented due to neoliberal health care reforms and the privatization of health care. Attempts to enable transnational access to public health care services throughout the European Union (EU) have contributed to this process by spreading ideas of EU citizens as consumers having to make informed choices about health insurance. However, marginalized populations such as EU migrant sex workers are presented with only limited choices within these systems. This article highlights how these limitations in access to health insurance are not only related to financial precarities, but are also caused by underlying racialized, classist, and sexualized assumptions about citizenship and belonging which influence the legal framework of both national and EU-wide health insurance provision. Based on ethnographic research with migrants from eastern EU countries involved in sex work in Berlin, the article discusses their attempts to gain access to health insurance as a salient example of the moral economy of health insurance provision in a supposedly universal health care system. Following how migrant sex workers from eastern European countries experience and negotiate exclusions from health insurance systems, the article addresses how meanings and interpretations of health insurance change towards an understanding of health insurance not as a right, but as a privilege for those conforming to narrow ideas of European citizenship. This indicates that current restructurings of health insurance systems are not only characterized by increasing privatization. Equally, the (re-)emergence of links between access to health insurance and restrictive ideas of belonging and citizenship rights are undermining aspirations for transnationally available universal health care.

Does Financial Development, Globalisation and Institutional Quality Drive the Income Convergence in the Central and Eastern European Union Countries?

Abstract Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries are struggling with internal and external macroeconomic and social factors in their catching-up strategies to be closer, as economic wealth, to the Western developed European countries. In these ex-communist countries, institutional factors could be seen as critical for success in narrowing the income gap. The paper proposes an analysis of the impact of economic and financial development and globalization on the income gap in 11 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia) for the period of 1996 to 2019, taking into consideration institutional factors. The study analyses the variables: transition coefficient as a proxy for income gap, GDP per capita, KOF Financial Globalisation Index, Financial Development Index and World Bank Institutional Indicators in a panel approach methodology and estimation of FMOLS and DOLS equations. The paper’s findings show that all considered factors have a significant contribution to the income gap in the examined period of time. Economic and financial development, as well as institutional quality, is positively associated with the closing income gap, while globalization has a negative influence. It is also revealed the direction of the causality relationship between the considered variables: from economic and financial development, globalization and institutional quality to the income gap. These findings suggest some policy recommendations in support of the continuation of the European integration process.

Eastern European Union Countries in the Intra-EU Food Trade in 1999–2019

Eastern European Union Countries in the Intra-EU Food Trade in 1999–2019

Digitization and Financial Performance of Banking Sectors Facing COVID-19 Challenges in Central and Eastern European Countries

The COVID-19 pandemic deeply impacted not only human wealth but also all segments of the economy as well as the field of technology. Thus, the purpose of this paper was to analyze the effects that the pandemic crisis and digitization have had on the financial performance of banks in Central and Eastern European Union countries (CEEC) during the 2010–2021 period. In order to capture an overview of the financial performance of the banking systems in the 10 CEECs, we used three variables—ROA, ROE and NPL—as reference indicators. In order to highlight the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the performance of banking systems, we used the number of reported cases as a variable, and to highlight the impact of digitization, we used as indicators the number of automated teller machines (ATMs) per 100,000 adults, number of certificates of secure internet servers, number of credit cards, number of debit cards, percentage of individuals using internet banking, and the number of commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults. Thus, the impact of digitization and the pandemic crisis generated by the COVID-19 virus on the performance of the banking systems in the 10 CEECs is outlined through three regression models using the robust regression model. The obtained results show that, as the infection rates with COVID-19 increased, the performance of banks measured by ROE and ROA decreased. Regarding the impact of digitization on performance, we note that an increase in the use of internet banking and the security of bank servers generated positive effects on the performance of banks. The results of the study are useful for banking product development departments, who should consider the important role of digitization in increasing the performance of banking services and thus design new digital products or ways to expand existing ones on a larger scale.

Combining the Broadband Coverage and Speed to Improve Fiscal System Efficiency in the Eastern European Union Countries

Current challenges triggered by the limited interactions between people and institutions during the pandemic crisis have emphasized the need to strengthen the digitization process of all public services. In this sense, we considered it opportune to carry out research in order to establish the impact of the technological infrastructure, in terms of coverage and download speed, on the efficiency of the fiscal policy expressed by the volume of income from taxes and fees. Therefore, we propose a robust regression model tested with S-estimator that allows for outliers in the dataset. The results indicate that an improvement in download speed has a significant positive effect on the level of tax collection and that a better broadband coverage improves the amount of revenues from taxes and contributions. In the analyzed countries, the technological infrastructure is developing, and the decision-makers should make efforts to reach the targets proposed in the Digital Agenda for Europe in terms of broadband coverage and speed.

How Green is the Economic Complexity in the Central and Eastern European Union Countries?

The paper analyses the association between economic complexity and openness to trade green products in eleven Central and Eastern European Union (EU) countries over the period of 2003–2016. The study uses the “green openness index” as it is framed by the Beta Akademi Social Science Lab in order to explain the progress in the productive structure of the European economies. In a panel data approach comprising of eleven EU economies, other explanatory variables of economic complexity are included: financial development, research and development (R&D) expenditures, and number of patents. The methodological approach includes: testing cross-sectional dependence of considered variable and second generation test for stationarity check. Cointegration on long run is verified by Westerlund test and estimation of regression coefficients uses FMOLS and DOLS models. Finally the causality relationship between economic complexity and explanatory variables is tested with Dumitrescu-Hurlin test. Empirical results show that Economic Complexity Index (ECI) is positively associated with green openness index (GOP), financial development, R&D expenditures and number of patents in the examined panel of countries. A validated causality relationship is running from green trade to economic complexity and from economic complexity to financial development and number of patents. It is also revealed validated bidirectional causality between R&D expenditures and ECI. Policy implications are also provided.

A longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of the distribution of Common Agricultural Policy aids in European countries

The primary sector plays a key role in any country, from both economic and social perspectives, as has been underscored by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In Europe, this sector is highly dependent on the aid provided under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Therefore, the distribution of this aid among the various recipients is crucial to maintaining a strong primary sector throughout the European Union (EU). This is especially true in light of the new funding for the period from 2021 to 2027 and the United Kingdom's departure from the EU. In this sense, the 93.5% of the first pillar of CAP aid consists of direct aid to farmers. The related literature has shown its effect on aspects such as sustainability and farmers' income, among others, and its distribution in specific geographical areas. In this vein, the present paper conducts a longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of the distribution of aid across EU countries. The results show that the CAP reforms and the incorporation of countries into the EU influenced the distribution of aid. Moreover, there is a clear division between Eastern and Western EU countries, with a more equitable distribution of aid in the West.

Internal Rate of Return on Investment in Higher Education in Europe

Abstract The study aims to update the well-settled issue in literature of rate of return on investment in higher education in Europe. The proposed approach slightly modifies the existing methodology based on the Mincer equation, using an updated set of data for the period 2014–2016 from the European Central Bank's ‘Household Finance and Consumption Survey’. The results obtained, ranging between 13% and 21%, are higher compared to historical records for the years 1996–2013. As for the microeconometric estimates of the Mincer-type equation, they are sound and comparable, although showing higher margins in relation to the recent figures. Thus, they may suggest an increasing trend in valuation and importance of human capital based on high school degree, especially for the Central–Eastern European Union countries, resulting probably from rapid economic and cultural convergence.

Migrant labour in the UK’s post-Brexit agri-food system: Ambiguities, contradictions and precarities

Pressure from global retailers to reduce food costs has altered downstream agri-food work regimes, with many food producers having adopted more flexible modes of working and employed migrant labour from lower income countries. Since the expansion of the European Union (EU) in 2004, the farming and food sector in the UK has recruited large numbers of migrant workers from central and eastern EU countries. The decision by the UK electorate in 2016 to leave the EU - what has been termed Brexit - has created a ‘crisis’ in relation to the continued supply of migrant labour. In this paper we explore the role of migrant labour within the UK's agri-food system and the ways that migrant workers have been positioned by different actors within recent discussions of farming, food and Brexit. We do this through an analysis of national survey data on migrant agricultural workers and materials from interviews with more than 70 agri-food organisations in the UK. What emerges from this research is that rather than viewing Brexit as a key moment to critique the state of the UK's agri-food system, including the structural conditions of work, dominant actors have used it more narrowly to construct a ‘crisis’ of migrant labour supply, arguing for new policy mechanisms to guarantee the future provision of low-cost imported labour. Within these narratives of post-Brexit agri-food futures, the presence of migrant labour has been both normalised and institutionalised by conventional food organisations but the realities of migrant work and the voices of migrants themselves have been conspicuous largely by their absence.

Alcohol and health in Central and Eastern European Union countries - status quo and alcohol policy options.

The aim of this narrative review is to give an overview of alcohol consumption, attributable health harm, and potential alcohol control policies to reduce this harm in five Central and Eastern European Union countries: Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. The overall level of alcohol consumption was high, with the two highest-consuming countries in the world being situated in Central and Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Latvia), and all five of these countries being in the top 15% of World Health Organization member states with respect to consumption. Accordingly, alcohol-attributable health harm was high. Implementation of alcohol control policies could be improved, especially the implementation of pricing policies such as taxation increases. A moderate increase of the tax share on alcohol could result in thousands of lives being saved in Central and Eastern Europe in a single year. As taxation increases not only save lives, but also increase state revenue, the implementation of this alcohol control measure should be made a priority.

El rol de Europa del Este en el principio de cohesión de la Unión Europea. Hacia una incompleta integración

La Unión Europea viene promoviendo la consecución de la cohesión social y económica desde sus Tratados Constitutivos. El alcance de este objetivo se ha visto ralentizado por varios motivos, como la entrada de los países de Europa del Este que ha supuesto un aumento de la heterogeneidad en la Unión; o por el diferente impacto de la reciente crisis económica en los distintos países. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar el proceso de convergencia/divergencia de los países de Europa del Este en los parámetros socioeconómicos de la Unión Europea que fomentan la cohesión social y económica. La hipótesis de partida es que estos países han mantenido diferentes ritmos de convergencia con la Unión Europea por conformar un bloque heterogéneo, explicado por varios factores: el tiempo de permanencia en la Unión, la influencia de la Unión Soviética, el impacto de la Estrategia Europa 2020 o la situación de la que partían antes de entrar en la Unión. La metodología empleada es mixta, combinando la entrevista a profesionales con el análisis estadístico de los diferentes comportamientos sociales, económicos y políticos en los países de Europa del Este desde el estallido de la crisis hasta ahora. En la comparativa se consideran tres ámbitos de actuación, correspondientes a las principales áreas que conforman la política social y que se integran como objetivos dentro de la Estrategia Europa 2020 (ingresos, trabajo y educación), al tiempo que se incluye la respuesta institucional ofrecida por los diferentes países. European Union has been promoting the achievement of social and economic cohesion since the Treaty Establishing the European Community. A true embodiment of this goal has been slowed down by several reasons, such as the attachment of Eastern Europe countries that increased the heterogeneity in the European Union; or how European countries dealt with the latest economic recession that took place in 2008. The aim of this paper is to analyse the process of convergence/divergence among Eastern Europe countries and European Union based in a few parameters that foster the economic and social cohesion. The hypothesis is that countries from East of Europe have kept different rates of convergence with the European Union because they shape a heterogeneous group of countries due to several factors: accession year of each country to the European Union, influence of the former Soviet Union, Europe 2020 Strategy’s repercussion or the previous situation where these countries come from before being full members of the European Union. In this paper, a mixed methodology was applied, combining interviews with professionals in different fields of knowledge with the statistical analysis of social, economic and political behaviours in the Eastern European Union countries since the outbreak of the crisis until now. In this comparative, three fields of action have been considered as the main areas that compose social policy and are also integrated in the European 2020 Strategy (incomes, work and education), combined with the institutional response offered by these countries.

Burden of disease from exposure to secondhand smoke in children in Europe.

Secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure at home and fetal SHS exposure during pregnancy are a major cause of disease among children. The aim of this study is quantifying the burden of disease due to SHS exposure in children and in pregnancy in 2006-2017 for the 28 European Union (EU) countries. Exposure to SHS was estimated using a multiple imputation procedure based on the Eurobarometer surveys, and SHS exposure burden was estimated with the comparative risk assessment method using meta-analytical relative risks. Data on deaths and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) were collected from National statistics and from the Global Burden of Disease Study. Exposure to SHS and its attributable burden stalled in 2006-2017; in pregnant women, SHS exposure was 19.8% in 2006, 19.1% in 2010, and 21.0% in 2017; in children it was 10.1% in 2006, 9.6% in 2010, and 12.1% in 2017. In 2017, 35,633 DALYs among children were attributable to SHS exposure in the EU, mainly due to low birth weight. Comprehensive smoking bans up to 2010 contributed to reduce SHS exposure and its burden in children immediately after their implementation; however, SHS exposure still occurs, and in 2017, its burden in children was still relevant. Exposure to secondhand smoke at home and in pregnancy is a major cause of disease among children. Smoking legislation produced the adoption of voluntary smoking bans in homes; however, secondhand smoke exposure at home still occurs and its burden is substantial. In 2017, the number of deaths and disability-adjusted life years in children attributable to exposure to secondhand smoke in the European Union countries were, respectively, 335 and 35,633. Low birth weight caused by secondhand smoke exposure in pregnancy showed the largest burden. Eastern European Union countries showed the highest burden.

Dynamic Cost Inefficiency of the European Union Meat Processing Firms

AbstractWe apply dynamic data envelopment analysis (DEA) to estimate dynamic cost inefficiency for a sample of European Union (EU) large meat processing firms over the period 2005–2012 and decompose this into the contributions of technical and allocative inefficiency. The estimation of dynamic inefficiencies controls for adjustment costs associated with firms’ investments. We further contribute by measuring dynamic cost inefficiencies and their components with regard to own region group (managerial inefficiencies) and the gap between the pooled frontier and the region‐specific frontier (programme inefficiencies). Results show that technical inefficiency tends to be the largest component of cost inefficiency when both conducting the analysis for the EU as a whole and estimating a region‐specific frontier. Results suggest significant differences in cost, technical, and allocative inefficiencies between meat processing firms in eastern, western and southern EU countries. We also find that the gaps between the pooled and region‐specific frontiers tend to be small to negligible, which suggests that the main source of pooled inefficiencies are shortcomings in managerial practices rather than differences in region‐specific conditions.

Evaluating environmental performance using data envelopment analysis: The case of European countries

Environmental efficiency is considered to be a critical pillar of sustainable development; consequently, improving environmental performance has aroused attention at both the local and global level. This study evaluated the environmental performance of European Union (EU) countries using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach and the global Malmquist-Luenberger index. Although literature using the DEA approach to measure environmental performance exists, this study’s main contribution was considering different types of undesirable outputs and using long-term panel data on EU countries. In particular, the DEA window analysis technique was applied to evaluate the environmental performance of 27 EU countries in cross-sectional and time-varying data during the period 2000–2017. Three DEA models were examined; labor, capital, and energy were used as common inputs with a combination of different outputs, including gross domestic product, carbon dioxide and particulate matter emissions, and waste. The empirical results revealed that the trends in the environmental performance of the entire EU and its individual countries were similar under all examined models. Environmental performance was indeed negatively affected by the financial crisis of 2007–2008; this impact was mainly observed in eastern EU countries. Furthermore, both economic and environmental variables significantly influenced countries’ overall efficiency. The analysis using the global Malmquist-Luenberger index elucidated that overall, EU countries experienced the efficiency improvement during the study period, although fluctuations were observed. These results enable countries and policymakers to understand their environmental performance, identify strengths and weaknesses, and set targets for further improvement based on the current best practices of comparable peers.

Study of spatial uniformity of sustainable development of the European Union before, during and after the economic crisis

The purpose of the paper is study of spatial uniformity in the field of sustainable development of European Union and geographical regions of Europe analyzed by the prism of EU countries located in this regions before, during and after the economic crisis from 2007–2008. Material and methods The analysis of similarities and differences between the EU Member States countries or in the case of geographic regions of Europe has been based on sustainable development indicators published by Eurostat. To the final set of diagnostic features, the 22 indicators have been selected. To study the spatial differentiation of sustainable development the taxonomic measure of development based on median vector Weber as well vector calculus were used. The impact of the economic crisis is particularly obvious in the Southern and Eastern European Union countries. The position of the Southern countries, that failed to cope with the world economic and financial crisis, deteriorated and they fell into the group at the lowest level of development. The results obtained in this study can be used in subsequent years to examine the direction of changes in sustainable development levels observed both from the point of view of the EU Member States and geographical regions.

Innovation and Exporting: A Study on Eastern European Union Firms

This paper investigates how firm-level innovation and productivity affect the export propensity in manufacturing firms in seven Eastern European Union countries. With respect to innovation activities, we analyze the complementarity between pair-wise product, process and non-technological (organizational and marketing) innovations when the objective function is represented by the exporting probability of a firm. Analyzing CIS2008 data, we find that productivity always has a positive and significant impact on the exporting propensity of firms. Furthermore, complex innovative firms, when large in size and/or from medium high–high technology sectors, can take advantage in terms of a higher attitude to export than non-innovators and simple innovators. By considering these results, governments have to introduce policies that can induce firms, especially small and medium ones, to implement complex innovations. This is fundamental in order to be more productive and more competitive.

Foreign Direct Investment Inflows and Financial Development in Central and Eastern European Union Countries: A Panel Cointegration and Causality

Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows have increased considerably in the globalized world as of the mid-1980s. The main objective of this research is to analyze interactions between FDI inflows and financial sector development in Central and Eastern European Union countries between 1996 and 2015 with panel data analysis. Our findings reveal that there is no cointegrating relationship among FDI inflows, investments of foreign portfolio, and the development of financial sectors, but there is a one-way causality from development of financial sectors to FDI inflows over the short run.