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EU countries, including those in Central and Eastern Europe, seem to have increasingly similar economies, allowing for the study of real convergence as a process of equalising income levels (measured by GDP per capita). Studies of income convergence in the European Union also have a regional dimension and often focus on convergence at the NUTS2 or NUTS3 regional level. The level of development and income in Polish regions differ significantly. The regional policy implemented at the national and EU level focuses on reducing these differences.

The main aim of the chapter is to analyse the income convergence process among regions in Poland and verify the effectiveness of regional policy implemented at the national and EU level.

The study uses Barro type regression for panel data, log t convergence test, and club clustering algorithm introduced by Phillips and Sul to identify patterns of club convergence in Polish regions. The data used for the study is the Local Data Bank provided by Statistics Poland, which includes gross domestic product per capita at the NUTS-3 level for 73 Polish regions over the period of 2000–2020.

The results of the study indicate a very weak convergence process for all Polish NUTS-3 regions and suggest a club convergence. The club convergence is characterised by regions with similar income levels clustering together. The regional distribution of clubs is similar to the regional distribution of income. The study's findings provide important insights into the effectiveness of regional policy in Poland and suggest that policymakers need to focus on policies that promote catch-up growth in less developed regions. The study also highlights the importance of supporting the most developed regions in the country as they can play a crucial role in driving the country's economic growth and prosperity.

The crisis of globalisation and the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic pose new threats to the national security of all countries. States have been increasingly challenged on their role, particularly in the economic order. Their actions concerning pandemic, ecology, climate or air pollution have been strongly inspired by the decisions of specialised international organisations, too often advised by dominant commercial and financial interests. In this context, states have no longer been able to assume the full range of national security components. Mercantilists considered that dependence on a State’s foreign trade led to an unacceptable reduction to the power of the Prince. Today, all countries are dependent on others, and then economic wars are becoming more and more likely. Armed warfare between states remains a potential response to these possible disruptions of essential intermediate consumption or to the search for power. Moreover, the lack of solidarity perceived during the pandemic testifies to the maintenance of political and economic power relations between States and the priority given to national interests to the detriment of international public goods. The pandemic highlights the inability of states to find common solutions to today’s global problems, thus developing a strong sense of insecurity among citizens.

This chapter focuses on testing optimal capital structure theory: The role of intervening variable debt to equity ratio (DER) on the influence of the financial performance, Ownership Structure of Independent Board of Commissioners (IBCO), Audit Committee (ACO), and Institutional Ownership on Firm Value. The research design was explanatory research using path analysis. Using purposive sampling, 61 manufacturing companies, observation period from 2014 to 2018 with 286 N samples. The research novelty empirically can prove the role of intervening variable DER on the effect of return on assets (ROA) on firm value and shows the market response to the ROA is fully reflected by DER, indicating the existence of an optimal capital structure. The role of DER on the effect of ROE and IBCO on firm value is a partial mediation with the inverse direction. This phenomenon shows that the mechanism of forming a balance between the responses of investors and creditors relates to debt financing.

This chapter examines the influence of external public borrowing resources on economic progress in Tunisia. The study focuses on two stages: First, the influence is studied in a direct sense and then in an indirect sense, i.e., through a transmission channel of this influence. By applying the autoregressive distributed technique with staggered lags (ARDL), over a period ranging from 1986 to 2019, the results showed that the influence of external borrowing resources on growth seems to be unfavorable in the short term but positive in the long term, hence the importance of the empirical technique chosen. Second, three interaction variables were tested, namely total government expenditure, government investment expenditure, and the real effective exchange rate. The results obtained call for better attention to the channels identified to maximize the positive influence of external public debt on the country's economic progress.

Today, many countries strive to develop their small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) sectors because of their acknowledged capacity to facilitate the optimal utilization of locally available resources while engaging local technology for the production of goods and services for local consumption as well as export trade. Also in area of agriculture, these enterprises serve as means of sustainable food production, improve employment generation, combat food shortage, and enhance economic growth and development. However, the growth performance of this sector in Nigeria has been dwindling over time, which requires government expenditure (GE) policy intervention. Therefore, this study examines the influence of public expenditure on the growth of SMEs in Nigeria employing unit root and co-integration tests for the period 1981–2019. The results reveal that SMEs and selected macroeconomic variables have a long-run relationship with SMEs output performance. It also shows that GE has direct and significant impact on the growth of SMEs in Nigeria, while government deficit financing (GDF) has adverse and insignificant effects on the Nigeria SMEs both in the short- and long-run period. Inflation rate (INF) has an inverse but significant effect on the growth of SMEs in Nigeria both in the short- and long-run periods. This study thus recommends, among others, that government should ensure the proper management of capital expenditure and recurrent expenditure in raising the growth of SMEs in Nigeria to achieve inclusive growth.

The role of financial institutions and financial intermediaries in fostering economic growth (ECO) by improving the efficiency of capital accumulation, encouraging savings, and ultimately improving the productivity of the economy has been well established by the researchers. The reforms in the financial sector worldwide during the 1980s and 1990s were aimed at ushering in greater efficiency and more competitiveness.

The impact of financial market freedom (MF) on the overall development of the financial sector and thereby the growth in an economy is one of the most important considerations for policymakers over the years. This chapter aims to examine the causal relationship between financial MF and ECO in the Indian economy in the post-reform period.