Eastern Journal of European Studies

 Sara Casagrande,  Bruno Dallago

ABSTRACT: This article investigates the economic consequences of EU membership for the countries that established the EU in 1992. The Synthetic Control method is used in the frame of an algorithmic methodology that aims to guide the choice of donor pool countries and predictors by testing different combinations. The algorithm allows to judge the appropriateness of the research design by computing a set of synthetic countries able to improve the performance of the benchmark case (i.e., a synthetic country computed using an initial large basket of donor pool units and predictors). According to the results, the algorithm has been able to improve the counterfactual scenarios' precision and robustness for all tested countries. It shows that the economic effect of the EU membership has significantly varied among countries. Results suggest that the European integration process has not prevented persistent divergence and heterogeneity of growth paths among member countries.

KEYWORDS: algorithm, comparative economic studies, European integration, European Union, synthetic control method,

Pages: 5-40  | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0101

 Aurelian-Petruș Plopeanu,  Daniel Homocianu

ABSTRACT: Our paper examines the influence of the historical legacy regarding the impact of the border of the former Habsburg Empire, the former political membership of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), and perceptions about the communist past - in understanding the current tolerance of bribery in Romania, more than 25 years after the fall of communism. We started from an existing background suggesting that in the aftermath of the fall of communism, Romania underwent significant socio-economic changes, with persisting regional disparities accentuated by historical and cultural legacies. Using representative data from the European and World Values Survey joint dataset v.2.0, other relevant sources (Public Opinion Barometer from 2000 and 2007), variable selection and analysis methods based on DK/NA value treatment, binary derivations, the LASSO pack in Stata 17.0 together with different types of regressions including OLS, binary and ordered logistic ones, cross-validations both random and based on well-established criteria (mixed-effects modeling), and collinearity removal techniques based on maximum accepted values of the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF), the results highlight that respondents from certain Romanian macro-regions that experienced higher levels of membership in the PCR and positive views about communism are less likely to be tolerant of bribery. It appears that if the region of residence was part of the former Habsburg Empire, current intentions for bribery are higher. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the propensity to bribe is negatively affected by current macro elements, such as higher crime levels, material deprivation, urban connectivity or lower levels of migration abroad, and left-wing voting preferences.

KEYWORDS: bribery tolerance, intentions, historical border, former communist party membership,

Pages: 41-71 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0102

 Kosjenka Dumancic,  Dominik Vuletic

ABSTRACT:  The Company Law universally requires shareholders to participate in meetings in order to formulate a set of corporate acts. Although provisions allowing the possibility for virtual shareholder meetings have already been implemented in many legislations, the COVID-19 crisis has given this relative legal novelty a status of paramount regulatory importance. The post-crisis regulatory development of the field in light of the process of digitalisation is the subject of this paper. The paper firstly gives an overview of the academic debate on the subject with a focus on the pandemic. Then, it continues to produce a comparative overview of virtual general meetings regulations in selected jurisdictions, namely Switzerland, Italy, Germany, U.S. state of Delaware and the European Union Company Law. Prior to the pandemic, the Croatian Company Law encompassed the possibility for hybrid virtual general meetings of shareholders if stipulated in company bylaws. The aforementioned possibility was used in Croatia for the first time during the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis. The conclusions of the paper produce general recommendations for regulatory policy in this field with an emphasis on the European and the Croatian Company Law de lege ferenda.

KEYWORDS: virtual general meetings of shareholders, Company Law, Corporate Governance, COVID-19, digitalisation,

Pages: 72-91 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0103

 Zuzana Kittova,  Dusan Steinhauser,  Simona Krivosudska

ABSTRACT: The repeated risk of the so-called hard Brexit created great uncertainty about the future of mutual EU-UK trade relations. In 2020, the uncertainty was exacerbated by the COVID-19 global pandemic. These critical situations affected the EU's external trade and, in particular, the EU export capacity. Therefore, in addition to the standard factors, such as GDP, labour productivity or the presence of the FTA determining EU exports, this paper examines those factors that were relevant for EU export between 2016 and 2020, i.e. the uncertainty stemming from Brexit and the global COVID-19 pandemic. Fixed and time effects panel data analysis combined with the difference in difference method and a Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator were used. The negative impact of Brexit uncertainty on EU exports has not been proven. The COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a deep downturn in international trade in 2020, had a negative impact on EU exports. However, EU exports to all partners decreased significantly regardless of the COVID-19 prevalence. This study updates the literature on the nexus between uncertainty and trade by examining the recent critical factors affecting EU export developments.

KEYWORDS: European Union, Brexit, COVID-19 pandemic, export, PPML,

Pages: 92-112 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0104

 Olga Reznikova,  Oleksandr Korniievskyi

ABSTRACT: This article offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to the issue of societal resilience in wartime. Given the fact that the potential of a society's resilience is fully revealed under conditions of shocks and crises, studying the experience of the Ukrainian society during the Russian-Ukrainian war provides valuable information for testing theoretical assumptions, developing knowledge and practices in the field of societal resilience. We have analysed the resilience of the Ukrainian society through the prism of the resilience of complex social system`s elements and connections between them in order to maintain the system`s functionality under destructive influences of war. We argue that there is a cumulative effect of the interaction of human, cultural, organizational, political, economic and other components of societal resilience, which enhances the adaptability and transformability of society. The article contributes to a better understanding of the civil society's role in crisis management and intersectoral linkages in ensuring society`s resilience.

KEYWORDS: societal resilience, civil society institute, security, volunteers, war,

Pages: 113-133 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0105

 Merilen Laurimae,  Tiiu Paas

ABSTRACT: This study investigates the role of accumulated human capital in how people adapt to shocks and how this is reflected in income dynamics. The analysis is based on detailed monthly administrative data from Estonia between 2016 and 2020, containing more than 800 thousand observations. The results show that people with higher human capital experience less income fluctuation and their potential for income losses is lower. The role of human capital becomes even more significant during a crisis. An important effect of subsidies was also evident during the crisis, when the risk of losing incomes for people with less accumulated human capital would have been even higher if there had been no additional state support in the form of subsidies and benefits. In light of the Covid-19 crisis and its specifics, it is crucial to continuously improve digital skills through education to cope with socio-economic development in the future.

KEYWORDS: income, human capital, shocks, Covid-19, Estonia, 

Pages: 134-156 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0106

 Medalit De La Cruz Castellanos,  Ana Lucia Nieto Ochoa,  Katia Soledad Ramos Leon,  Miguel Angel Capunay Reategui,  Danton Arturo Escalante Yaulilahua

ABSTRACT: Within the member countries of the European Union, Romania is consolidated as the country with the sixth largest agricultural area and the fifth largest arable area; this natural advantage allows it to be a major agricultural producer and possibly a potential agro-exporter in the world. This research sought to analyse the competitiveness levels of the Romanian agro-export sector through its five most representative products using a competitiveness matrix; as a complement to the analysis, the Revealed Comparative Advantage indicator was used; the information was extracted from the ITC-TradeMap. As general results, Romania evidenced a solid agro-export sector, which manages to compete with the main exporters in the world and even manages to take advantage of different categories of the selected target markets, as is the case of Sunflower Seed.

Keywords: agro-export sector, competitiveness study, dynamism, top exporters and Romanian case,

Pages: 157- 176 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0107

 Miruna Butnaru-Troncota

ABSTRACT: The brutal start of Russia's invasion in Ukraine in February 2022 had numerous unexpected consequences. One of them was that it brought enlargement back at the top of EU's agenda. This was also followed by a revitalisation of EU's own internal dilemma between prioritising deepening or widening, together with the increasing contradictions between member states on how should enlargement proceed. It is thus relevant to assess whether this geopolitical shift had an overall positive or negative impact on the EU. In this context, the main aim of the article is to assess the various forms of 'wartime politicisation' between 2022 and 2024 among the main policy actors in EU's public sphere around the topic of advancing its enlargement policy. In end, the article demonstrates that 'wartime politicisation' can have both stabilizing and destabilizing effects on EU and discusses future avenues of research.

KEYWORDS: enlargement, European Union, politicisation, Ukraine, war, Western Balkans,

Pages: 177-200 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0108

 Mindaugas Butkus,  Laura Dargenyte-Kacileviciene,  Kristina Matuzeviciute,  Dovile Rupliene,  Janina Seputiene

ABSTRACT: Until recently, the output-unemployment relationship (Okun's coefficient) was believed to follow two regimes, implying a uniform effect of expansionary fiscal policy on unemployment during economic booms and declines. However, research by Oh (2018) and Donayre (2022) introduced a three-regime approach, suggesting this relationship varies over different economic phases. Building on this, we propose a multinomial Okun's coefficient model using a gap model and quantile regression to estimate the coefficient at various unemployment levels. Our findings reveal that Okun's coefficient is significantly higher during severe recessions and lower at the onset of economic decline compared to the two-regime model. This indicates that the effectiveness of expansionary fiscal policy in reducing unemployment is limited when implemented at the start of a recession and is more effective during severe recessions, suggesting a need to re-evaluate the timing of such policies.

KEYWORDS: output-unemployment relationship, Okun's gap model, panel quantile regression, EU countries,

Pages: 201-218 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0109

 Mihaela Clincu,  Alexandru Bănică

ABSTRACT: The current article explores the integrative dimension of culture within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the European level while fostering cultural stakeholders' empowerment. As sustainable development is an international priority, the interest in the significance of the cultural sector to the transformative process towards sustainable development has risen. The dominant explanation for this trend is given by the cross-cutting dimension of the cultural field and its premises to connect the three pillars of sustainable development: social, economic and environmental. The article supports this connection by using data from semi-structured interviews with representatives of ten organisations active in the cultural field from Belgium, Greece, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Hungary. The research findings show the relevance of the cultural sector as enabling sustainable development through its transversal dimension. The results are directed towards facilitating better understanding and increased attention to the benefits of trans-sectorial cooperation between grassroots, research and decision-making actors as a contributive approach to the SDGs.

KEYWORDS: sustainable development, culture, NGOs, SDGs, European Union, 

Pages: 219-249 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0110

 Alena Auchynnikava,  Nazim Habibov,  Yunhong Lyu

ABSTRACT: The paper examines the correlation between patriarchal attitudes, women's asset ownership, participation in household decision-making and women's educational attainment across 27 post-communist countries. It hypothesizes that patriarchal attitudes hinder women's educational achievements while women's asset ownership and participation in household decision-making facilitate them. Utilizing regression analysis, marginal effects, post-regression simulation, the study tests and confirms these hypotheses. Results show that for every unit increase in women's asset ownership and participation in decision-making, the odds of achieving higher educational attainment increase by approximately 35.7% and 16.5%, respectively. Conversely, a unit increase in patriarchal attitudes decreases these odds by 15.8%. The findings underscore the importance of state and civil society commitment to addressing gender disparities in education.

KEYWORDS: women empowerment, patriarchy, women education, transition countries,

Pages: 250-271 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0111

 Balazs Pager,  Csaba G. Toth,  Annamaria Uzzoli

ABSTRACT: Hungary is one of the five countries in the World which were most affected by the pandemic in terms of registered COVID-19 mortality up to 2023. Our research aims to identify those socioeconomic variables that explain the geographical distribution of registered district-level COVID-19 mortality in Hungary. Using OLS and spatial regression, we found that the higher share of elderly people and respiratory death rate were associated with a more severe mortality burden. Educational attainment was negatively associated with COVID-19 mortality. Variables related to healthcare access were not found to be significantly associated with district-level COVID-19 mortality. Our results indicated that the spatial term of COVID-19 mortality is significant. Positive spatial autocorrelation can be observed in some less developed districts and a few inner peripheral areas where COVID-19 mortality was relatively high, and relatively developed areas like the agglomeration area of the capital in which COVID-19 mortality was low.

KEYWORDS: COVID-19, socio-spatial inequality, spatial autocorrelation, district-level, Hungary, 

Pages: 272-297  | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0112

 Cosmina-Daniela Ursu,  Jozsef Benedek

ABSTRACT: Following the collapse of the communist regime, Romania underwent significant economic, territorial, and social transformations that exacerbated inequality. To help policymakers create effective economic strategies, it is necessary to pinpoint the areas with the largest disparities. Thus, using spatial statistics available in ArcGIS, the primary goal of this study is to identify spatial clusters/outliers of income per capita. The findings indicate a strong concentration of high incomes at the regional level in Bucharest-Ilfov, West, Centre, and North-West regions. Conversely, low-income groups are concentrated in every other region, and their circumstances do not appear to improve over the course of the analysis period (2007-2021). At the metropolitan level, large cities are particularly home to high-value clusters and their influence within metropolitan areas is outlined.

KEYWORDS: spatial inequalities, income per capita, cluster and outlier analysis, Romania,

Pages: 298-323  | Full text (PDF) 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0113

 Simant Shankar Bharti,  Saroj Kumar Aryal,  Andrii Kutsyk

ABSTRACT: The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has highlighted Poland's significant geopolitical role in Eastern Europe. Despite ongoing conflicts since 2014, the recent escalation has increased regional security volatility, particularly for countries like Poland. This study examines Poland's strategic position and role in the Ukraine conflict by analysing its geopolitical and geostrategic implications within the broader Eastern European framework. The research, employing qualitative content analysis and a phenomenological approach, investigates how Poland's geopolitical stance both influences and is influenced by the evolving dynamics of the Ukraine war and Eastern European geopolitics. Our findings indicate that Poland has not only reinforced its strategic importance in the area, but also shaped its role as a key player in the ongoing conflict. This engagement reflects a broader strategy to counter Russian aggression while strengthening ties with NATO and the EU, thereby enhancing its sway in the region.

KEYWORDS: Ukraine conflict, Poland, Eastern Europe, geopolitics, regional security,

Pages: 324-344 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0114

 Jolanta Bienkowska,  Czesław Sikorski

ABSTRACT: The current social science problem is the use of quantitative or statistical research methods rather than qualitative and descriptive methods in social studies. That, in consequence, creates a contradiction in the process of genuine selection of a research method according to the specificity of the research subject. Therefore, the article aims to emphasise the necessity of the natural selection of a research method considering the subject of research and, moreover, to draw attention to the problem of overusing the survey method and statistical analysis as the primary type of research method used in scientific papers in social sciences prepared and published in Eastern Europe. The example from management sciences was used as a reference point for constructing the argument. The asymmetric assessment of research methods used in management sciences is applied in this article. The disadvantages of quantitative methods and the advantages of qualitative methods are highlighted. The findings indicate a necessity to integrate qualitative and quantitative research methodologies through a mixed approach, particularly within the domain of management sciences. Additionally, there is a compelling rationale to reassess the prevailing standards and methodologies in research, as well as the expectations of publishers in the field of social sciences.

KEYWORDS: social science, management science, research methodology, quantitative research, qualitative research, 

Pages: 345-360 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0115

 Ana-Maria Opria,  Ema Corodescu-Roșca,  Lucian Rosu

ABSTRACT: Rural development is often hindered by the lack of human and social capital. The LEADER program is one of the European Union's financial instruments destined to improve the rural areas governance by introducing a set of institutional changes including new local policies, practices and actors. These changes translate into the seven principles at the heart of the LEADER philosophy: partnership, integrated and multi-sectoral strategy, area-based approach, bottom-up approach, cooperation, networking and innovation. This article focuses on assessing the commitment of the Local Action Groups (LAGs) to the LEADER principles in a post-socialist country based on the perception of local actors. In this respect, we combined a quantitative (survey) with a qualitative approach (interview) for evaluating the degree of LEADER principles implementation. The study brings evidence on the specific principles which seem more difficult to integrate and provides a basis for future policy design. /span>

KEYWORDS: LEADER programme, rural communities, local governance, stakeholders' perception, LEADER principles,

Pages: 361-382 | Full text (PDF)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/ejes-2024-0116