Digital Economy and the Green Revolution

Market segmentation and analysis have benefited greatly from advancements in Machine Learning. Supervised and unsupervised learning techniques have been applied with great success in market analysis. This paper proposes such an approach that aims to first introduce a new dataset and identify the groups in which the market is segmented, by applying k-means++ clustering, and then to develop a well performing classifier that would correctly identify future companies and place them in the previously identified clusters for a disregarded industry, the Romanian private security market. First, a clustering algorithm is applied to group the companies into clusters. Then, the results are analyzed and findings are discussed about the market segmentation. 6 distinct groups are identified and the main factors that differentiate the companies are number of employees and turnover. Second, multiple classification algorithms are trained and benchmarked in order to find the best performing model. Due to the nature of the data, which is heavily imbalanced, sampling algorithms and weights adjustments are applied in order to improve model performance. Lastly, the best combination of classification algorithm and sampling technique is presented for the given data. The best performing model is a Multi-Layer Perceptron network, with an average F-score of 71.8. The best performing technique used to counter imbalanced data is ADASYN, with an average F-score of 69.9. The best performing combination and the best result overall is achieved by the Multi-Layer Perceptron in tandem with Random Oversampling, with an F-score of 83.3.

The world has shifted to the digital economy and data has become one of the most valuable commodities. As internet applications have made data collection seamless, artificial intelligence systems bring significant productivity gains by revolutionising the way data is processed and transformed into added-value. Artificial intelligence has a deep impact over our industrial and production means, supply chains and consumer patterns, as well as over education, mass-media, governance, and national security. Therefore, artificial intelligence development has become a priority of strategic importance to most nations. China, within the last decades, has advanced from a labour-intensive and low-cost manufacturing base to an increasingly sophisticated economy that is able to deliver high added-value goods and services to the world markets. In this transition, China is now openly aiming to become an innovation powerhouse that holds the global edge in crucial technologies. Given the fertile grounds laid by China’s market scale, high digital penetration rates and massive pool of consumers, but also the government’s interest in deploying social governance systems and increasing military capabilities, artificial intelligence became a top policy priority that is reflected at all levels. Within the evolutionary framework of Learning Models and drawing upon a data collected from public policy documents, specialised commercial databases and qualitative interviews conducted on the ground, this paper will examine the main characteristics of China’s AI development policy, highlighting the role played by the central and local governments within the AI ecosystem and the complex interactions with tech companies, universities and talent. At the same time, it aims to address several pertaining misconceptions in existing literature about China’s AI landscape and finally, on this basis, propose a set of key recommendations to the European Union regarding AI development.

The desired and designed need of qualitative extraction of healthcare experts’ opinions in situation of medicine in Russia and Romania tend this article to be focused on the complications as observed countries have relatively poor healthcare quality index among European countries. With that information gained we are allowed to held a future quantitative analysis to observe the representative sample’s feelings and thoughts which are valuable for the research as society here plays a role of a so-called “hidden customer” for mandatory insurance-based healthcare countries which Russia and Romania are nowadays, even if patients don’t pay directly for the service. The outcome of this study is a table of short, closed categories of hypotheses which are to point out weaknesses required that have to be improved. In this article we touched such dialogs with experts as the main problems of healthcare systems in the analyzed countries, financing of healthcare in Russia and Romania, common managerial practices in Russia and Romania, social issues in each country’s healthcare, marketing strategies and innovations. This qualitative analysis article extracts the results from experts’ opinions and in the end of each section shows the percentage of the sample to find the hypotheses for the future quantitative marketing research.

The relationship between community and entrepreneurship is a topic that has long been studied in the field of business administration. In more detail, these studies both establish that community and entrepreneurship are interrelated and are significant for the development of any country and any locality. This paper’s aim is to review previous community and entrepreneurship studies based on the bibliometric method. Furthermore, an overview of the studies of the relationship between community and entrepreneurship was provided. The study was based on 847 publications obtained from the Scopus database (including articles, conference proceedings, and books or book chapters). The analyzes were performed by using tools of VOSviewer software and Citespace software, and the analysis is done on several levels. In addition, assessments and analyzes of time, the field of study, keywords are provided. From the results of the research, it is possible to mention that the relationship between community and entrepreneurship is close. Besides, the objectives such as community sustainable development, social enterprise, and community entrepreneurship development are also interested in the research between community and entrepreneurship. The obtained results contribute to a better understanding of this research area. In addition, this study promotes potential research on community and entrepreneurship currently and in the future.

Greening the economy has become an objective for the European Union within the framework of the Green Deal, but also worldwide, given the Sustainable Development Goals most countries have been trying to achieve. In this context, all activities within the economy and society need to be reconsidered, including those that regard which activities or projects should be financed. Financing green activities is therefore in line with this large desiderate. This paper aims to perform a bibliometric analysis of the existing green finance academic research. Although there have been similar endeavors in the literature, our research is new and different in that we propose an up-to-date analysis of all-time academic output regarding green finance using VOSviewer while investigating solely articles indexed in the Web of Science database. Our four research questions are formulated around topics such as: research trends and subjects; emerging topics; most prolific and most cited countries, organizations, authors. We discuss the main results, as well as the practical, research and policy implications. By looking at a large number of papers (n = 1,513) and without particularly limiting our search to the exact phrase ‘green finance’, we manage to obtain a useful overview of research interest and output, which can help in conducting future research, drawing attention to key areas from a policy perspective and setting the bases for future research networks.

From an economic point of view, shortly digitalization will lead not only to progressive growth, but also to important transformations of jobs and to the reorganization of the way of carrying out the activity of retail, transport, and banking services. Our research aimed to identify and analyze the correlations between digitization and economic growth of EU countries in the period 2019–2021. In this paper, we use deep learning and principal component analysis as an efficient technique to improve the accuracy of classification for the set of EU countries classified according to The Digital Economy and Society Index. The used databases were Eurostat and World Bank. We selected 15 indicators on which we first trained a 2-layer neural network and we obtained a classifier with 92.52% accuracy. Then, we applied principal component analysis and reduced the original dataset to 3 principal components which retain together 78.21% of the initial variability. We train a 2-layer neural network on the score matrix given by the three retained principal components. The results revealed that the classification improved from 92.52 to 100%.

Higher education institutions are under continuous pressure of creating new skills and competencies of their students and graduates in order to increase their adaptability to the labor market. In the context of a mismatch between the labor market’s needs and graduates’ abilities in Romania, the role of various methods and practices deployed by universities and their stakeholders, aiming at addressing the aforementioned objective gains momentum. Internships, as tools of developing these competences and fostering students’ employability, are investigated in this paper through the lenses of the representatives of the business environment. The paper presents the perspective of Romanian employers upon the characteristics and quality of the internships programs, recently implemented in their organizations. As our study is an exploratory one, the research question is mainly descriptive and it interrogates the factors that contributed to the internship programs success. Using an online distributed questionnaire, containing both open and closed-ended questions, the employers were asked about different aspects related to the internships, including the factors that contributed to the success of the internship program. The results show that most of the respondents have a favorable opinion regarding the internship programs and their added value is clearly acknowledged by all stakeholders.

Digitalization is one of this century’s challenges and the current pandemic context has intensified this trend. Online sales are a practical application of this trend, and in this study we will analyze the online sale of movable goods from the perspective of the seller’s liability for the sold goods. We start from a general review of the sale contract, and we will particularize the contract depending on the features of operations performed online, by highlighting their individuality.

In a globalized economy, innovation is a priority of ensuring the competitiveness degree of companies, being the core of the development in any economic activity. The purpose of this paper is to study from a theoretical perspective the agile management of innovation in European small and medium sized enterprises, to analyze their particularities and how they act to stay competitive through innovating their business models. The literature review will cover the importance of innovation for companies, the multiple definitions and classifications of innovation and innovation management, theoretical models of innovation, the applicability of innovation management in different fields and in companies with different specifics, elements within companies that are important for an efficient innovation management, features of innovation management in an agile company, the geographical features of innovation management, business model innovation, efficiency growth, company’s performance. The paper will investigate the methods and practices, the connection with the business models used in order to drive innovation, how innovation’s agile management can be described in European SMEs, what results are achieved by SMEs in terms of innovation, how to describe the compatibility of innovation management—agile management. The paper aims to clarify from a theoretical point of view the particularities of the companies that fall into the previously defined niche, being a current and relevant one for the European economic space, given the challenging times the European SMEs had to face.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the financial performance (PF) of firms working in the oil and energy sector in the Romanian market in order to develop a realistic approach for evaluating company's profitability. Accounting metrics (ROA, ROE, ROIC, EPS), liquidity parameters (current ratio), and market-based indicators were used to assess the financial performance of the firm treated as a dependent variable (PBV). As per the findings of a regression analysis, CSR has a favorable impact on EPS but no impact on ROA, ROE, ROIC, or PBV. In the first model, the variable CA ANG had a negative impact on ROA and a negative impact on ROE (where the total number of workers indicates the company's size and the Long-term debt / Equity ratio represents the debt). Furthermore, CA ANG had a positive impact in the second model (where total assets indicate firm size and the ratio Total debt / Equity denotes debt), a negative influence in the two ROIC models, and a positive impact on the PBV. When it comes to size metrics, the total number of workers has a favorable impact on ROA and PBV. In the case of debt, the variable DT CP has a negative impact on ROE and ROIC, but the variable DTL CP has a positive impact on ROIC and a negative impact on PBV. The two models that included the liquidity ratio as a dependent variable were not statistically valid.

The following study's purpose is to examine at how corporate social responsibility CSR affects employees' employee satisfaction, which is assessed by a positive attitude toward their work, in companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. CSR has three aspects: environmental, community service, and human resources. A questionnaire was created and distributed via Google Forms to 84 Romanian businesses in order to collect data. To investigate the link between the dependent and independent variables, research questions and hypotheses were developed. The data collected using the SPSS system was then analyzed. Employees in higher managerial positions at the chosen firms were included in the respondents. There were 589 surveys collected that could be analyzed. The results of the study showed that corporate social responsibility has a favorable effect on employee satisfaction in Romania through its chosen aspects, which in turn helps increase employees' performance at work.

On March 24, 2015, the largest air accident on the European continent of the last decade took place; the Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed. The main objective of this research is to determine the economic-financial impact of this air crash on the market stock price of the involved companies, Lufthansa airline, and its manufacturer Airbus. This study also contributes to determining whether the financial value of both companies was impacted by the media activity after the event. The primary methodology used is the event study methodology, applying both the market model and the Fama–French model. The results reveal that the impact of the Germanwings Flight 9525 on the financial value of the companies involved is different, since there is a significant effect on the financial value of Lufthansa under the market model, and this effect is immediate, but there is no significant effect on the financial value of Airbus with any of the models analyzed. In the same way, it happens when analyzing the impact of the media, since there is only a significant relationship between Lufthansa's share prices and the impact of media research with the market model. These results are important for the companies involved, and especially for their investors. It also shows that the manufacturing company is less vulnerable to the impact of the media, and it does not suffer significant losses on the stock market.

This article analyzes the involvement of human resources in rebuilding trust and building reputation in Romanian banks. Numerous researches in the field of marketing or communication emphasize the importance of reputation for an organization. In addition, modern theories of the “new economy” show the connection between human resource management and reputation. These encourage the transformation of employees into “ambassadors” of the company, although they recognize the challenges that arise with the implementation of this process. With the help of in-depth half-structured interviews with 30 employees of the main banks in Romania, we tried to investigate whether the reputation is an objective assumed by them. At the same time, we aimed to analyze the stage of involvement of human resources in reputation management. Although the study has a subjective character given by the type of research, namely, the qualitative one, we can conclude that the financial-banking institutions in Romania seek to build a positive reputation but fail to outline authentic, clear and efficient employee branding processes. Although employees in Romanian banks can become extremely valuable resources, they are limited and strongly controlled instead of being encouraged to become a voice inside and/or outside the company. This article contributes to the study of human resource management and makes the connection between reputation management and people management. At the same time, the article offers relevant perspectives that can be taken into account by Romanian banks in order to strengthen their reputation through their employees.

The military conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation requires a prompt and balanced response from the European Union, which must support Kiev’s Western course, but also has to manage its energy industry’s dependence on Russian natural gas. A Munich syndrome in Brussels’ foreign policy would be a real failure, just as a set of uninspired or inefficient economic sanctions would cause irreparable losses for the Member States. The main objective of the article is to analyze the evolution of the European Union’s dependence (EU-27, after BREXIT) on the natural gas delivered by the Russian Federation during 2000–2021 period. The study will identify the causes that made it impossible to reduce this dependence and will formulate opinions on the factors that have affected Europe’s energy security over the last two decades. EViews12 (Hodrick-Prescott filter) and PSPPIRE (Pearson correlation coefficient) software were used in the research. The results of the research show an upward trend in the European Union’s dependence on Russian gas imports, mainly due to the year-on-year decline in the Member States’ domestic production. The assessment indicates a medium-term continuation of the evolution presented, but the inclusion of investments in the gas sector in the European taxonomy on sustainable financing can relaunch the domestic upstream sector, reversing this trend.

The regional development and potential are influenced by various factors. There are regions with different levels of drawback generated by factors such as existing economic development, demography, multiculturalism, education etc. The main concern the researchers had was identifying the development gaps and the economic convergence ways at regional levels. We consider that proper policies could be designed having as starting point the drawback level of the region and the structure of the brakes. Could we evaluate a drawback rank that is acting as a burden for regions to access even the convergence programs? Could the health model of drawback rank be applied to the region’s development? The present research is proposing a composite development drawback index (CDDI) for Romanian counties using three sub-components: economic development, demography, multiculturalism, for a first stage. This 3D index applied to Romanian regions is a pilot study from nD (multidimensional) CDDI to be applied at European regions. The result of the pilot study highlighted the 2 ranks of CDDI identifying the main vulnerable regions, with lowest and lower potential of implementing tools of economic development and convergence. The public decision makers should design special push and pull tools to overlay the drawback and to give them a chance to compete with the regular units.

The article showcases how European institutions, within the enlargement frameworks, proposed a suite of recommendations regarding Western Balkan countries’ foreign policy approaches, with a special focus on intra-regional cooperation, socio-political credibility, cross-border interaction predictability, multi-actor, and multi-level omnidirectional reform establishment. As such, the paper analyses WB6’s methods and degrees of alignment towards EU’s CFSP, especially in terms of shifting international patterns. The first part is an overview of WB6’ specificities and how such aspects constitute a bridge or a rift, when it comes to the embodiment of European values, ideals, directions, etc., as prerequisites of ascension into EU’s continental family. Decoding their core particularities is fundamental to the analysis, since it serves as a steppingstone for Balkans foreign affairs’ extrapolation, interpretation, and comprehension, through in-depth literature reviews, as an enabler of more nuanced and balanced perspectives on the matter, addressing the question of how unitary traits affect systemic conduct. The second part consists of a literature review-oriented in-depth exploration of the six countries’ international frameworks and the latter’s alignment towards the CFSP. This endeavour draws from the first chapter’s deciphering, correlated with extensive data examination, based on the Commission’s adhesion progress reports, alongside official documents, respective to each country, as to answer the question of how we interpret progress through juxtaposed interlinkages. Lastly, the main arguments, emanated from the investigative processes, are wrapped up as to form a base for future programmatic, operational and paradigmatic pathways, especially ones requiring an analytical overview.

The abstract should summarize the contents of the paper in short terms, i.e. 150–250 words. The economic and financial crises of the last decade, respectively the subprime crisis from the year 2008–2009 with the edge of the current situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have generated threats for many organizations around the world. It was created the premises for intensifying research on the resilience of organizations in order to understand in depth the concept itself, to establish the ability of businesses to adapt to various threats and disruptive factors. The concept of resilience is very complex and has an interdisciplinary nature, with a multitude of definitions and approaches in various areas of research. Through this study, a bibliometric analysis of the literature dealing with the concept of resilience was performed, using the WebOfScience scientific database for the period 1979–2021. The aim of the research is to evaluate the scientific output on resilience in order to have a deeper vision for the future directions of research in correlation with the evolution of economic phenomena worldwide. The general objectives are to identify the research directions of the publications in the mentioned database, to identify the articles and authors relevant for the research in the case and to map the countries that have contributed in the development of the scientific production specific to the concept. The results consist in identifying the relevant scientific production so far and the future research directions in studying the resilience of organizations for detecting their weaknesses but also the potential to return in case of a crisis or unforeseen event with major impact on the economy.

Innovation technology is changing many aspects of our lives. We live in a time of great transformation that predicts that in the coming years, every aspect of human life will be influenced by artificial intelligence. The phenomenon of robotics is a vast one, with popularity in all fields of activity, as the business world tends towards globalization, and the Internet is progressing at a rapid pace and the flow of information becomes particularly flexible, which makes us witness rapid digitization. of the whole society. Accounting professionals need to turn innovative solutions such as artificial intelligence and automation into opportunities, not threats … new technologies will make life easier. Blockchain is an innovative form of application of information technology in the Internet age, seen as a distributed “registry” defined by decentralization, immutability and transparency. The application of the blockchain in accounting is a topical issue, as it is a common accounting record and it is expected that its application could bring significant changes in the practical work of accountants. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to analyze the existing literature on the importance of cognitive technologies and the possible impact on accounting, from a bibliometric perspective. The bibliometric analysis is carried out both chronologically and geographically with the support of the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus database. VOSviewer software was used to process the data, with the aim of providing a comprehensive picture of how cognitive technologies are of interest to academic researchers and accounting practitioners.

Sustainability is a prosperous field of research for the agri-food supply chain domain. Agri-food supply chain management is currently focused in achieving higher performance of agri-food supply chains. At the same time, sustainability is being promoted as a factor affecting the total effectiveness of agri-food supply chains. The aim of this paper is to examine the practices followed by stakeholders in order to achieve the increase of sustainable performance in the agri-food supply chain domain and proposes ways to implement the existed technology in order to optimize the function of the agri-food supply chains by supporting a holistic framework towards sustainable and efficient agri-food supply chain systems.

Circular economy is a well know and promising model that has been studied and promoted for important environmental, economic and societal impacts. Bioeconomy is an emerging field, which is regarded as a possible pathway in order to reach a sustainable future. The adoption of the circular economy model for bio-based materials can bring fundamental changes, while shifting from the wide fossil-based production to more natural resources. A significant number of studies have been conducted, which is an indicator of importance, in order to clarify and propose the methodologies that should be followed as well as tools and technologies that can intensify the procedures to reach a sustainable future in all production sectors. Stakeholders have realized the urgency for change and actions have started to be taken. Legislation and technology are working closely in order to accelerate this transition. In this paper, we study where policy and technology stand and how they complement each other to the implementation of such practices at an operational level. Several propositions are outline in order to specify the barriers and locate opportunities to adopt these methods with a focus on the agri-food sector.

Emerging economies are becoming increasingly important role and are expected as a new engine of the global economy. The purpose of this report is to examine the impact of remittances on inequality in 18 emerging economies between 1985–2019. The study result confirms that remittances have a negative impact on income inequality, in which, the more received remittances, the lower the level of income inequality in these countries. Besides, foreign direct investment, liquidity of the economy, and trade openness also help to reduce income inequality. However, the increase in GDP per capita, government expenditure, and inflation can widen the income gap between rich and poor people in these countries. Finally, some policy implications are suggested for reducing income inequality in these countries in the future.

Digital transformation is an urgent strategy for enterprises to promote business activities forward the modern direction. The worldwide outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred the digital transformation in many areas of society, especially business activities. This study aims to clarify the current reality of digital transformation in business during the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam. The study data is collected by an online survey including 82 enterprises from the Vietnamese economy. The statistical analysis shows that these enterprises have implemented digital transformation in their business operations to adapt to the strict social distancing measures caused by the pandemic. In general, digital transformation has helped businesses increase revenue as well as reduce operating costs, however, investment expenditure for the digital transformation of these enterprises has been still quite limited. Finally, business leaders confirm that their enterprises would accelerate in the digital transformation process in the near future.