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This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

Financial stability has become a focal point for central banks since the global financial crisis. However, the optimal mix between monetary and financial stability policies remains unclear. In this study, the “soft” approach to such policy mix was tested – how often monetary policy (in inflation reports) analyses financial stability issues. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

A total of 648 inflation reports published by 11 central banks from post-communist countries in 1998-2019 were reviewed using a text-mining method.

Results show that financial stability topics (mainly cyclical aspects of systemic risk) on average account for only 2%of inflation reports’ content. Although this share has grown somewhat since the global financial crisis (in CZ, HU and PL), it still remains at a low level. Thus, not enough evidence was found on the use of a “soft” policy mix in post-communist countries.

Given the strong interactions between price and financial stability, this paper emphasizes the need to increase the attention of monetary policymakers to financial stability issues.

The study combines two research areas, i.e. monetary policy and modern text mining techniques on a sample of post-communist countries, something which to the best of the authors’ knowledge has not been sufficiently explored in the literature before.

We investigate the role of fiscal policy, through several measures of government revenues and expenditures and redistribution, on disposable and market income inequality and economic growth as well as the interaction between inequality and growth for 31 European countries from 1995 to 2019.

We use a simultaneous equations model to assess the linkage between economic growth, inequalities and fiscal policy variables.

(1) While disposable income inequality has a negative effect on all fiscal policy variables, market income inequality has a mixed effects; (2) for Eastern European countries, public consumption and direct taxation positively influence economic growth; conversely, for Western European countries, the effects are negative; (3) disposable and market income inequality have a positive effect on growth for Eastern European countries, and a negative influence on growth for Western European countries; (4) growth contributes to the increase of disposable and market income inequality for Eastern European countries; for Western European countries, the effects are opposite; and (5) fiscal policy allows for the attenuation of disposable income inequality.

The different results between the role of market and disposable income inequality levels lead us to suggest tax progressivity as an important feature to consider when analyse the trivariate relationship between inequalities, fiscal policy and growth. Furthermore, there are different dynamics between inequality and growth, and the role of fiscal policy, on both Eastern and Western European countries.

This study examines the impact of competition and concentration on bank income smoothing in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries.

The two-step system GMM method was used to analyse the impact of competition and concentration on bank income smoothing in 17 CEEs from 2004 to 2015.

Loan loss provisions (LLPs) are negatively related to bank competition and concentration. The authors find no evidence for income smoothing using LLPs in a high-competition or high-concentration environment.

A limitation of the study is that the analysis was restricted to commercial banks. The authors did not examine investment banks or microfinance banks in this study. Also, not having access to databases does not allow them to include recent years in the study.

CEE commercial banks will likely keep fewer provisions or engage in under-provisioning when they face intense competition, and this can expose them to credit risk, which may threaten their stability.

This study is the first to investigate the effect of concentration and competition on income smoothing among CEE banks.

While most West European nations were formed around pre-existing entities that could be called “countries” before the modern age, this was not the case in the Middle East. Some entities, like Egypt, did have a clear political and cultural identity before colonialism, others, like Algeria, did not. This chapter discusses the four states of the Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, through the perspective of “country creation” going into and coming out of colonial rule. We can see here two “models” of fairly similar types of historical development, one showing a gradual process through a protectorate period to relatively stable modern nations, another through violent conquest and direct colonization ending in violent liberation and military and wealthy but fragile states. The article asks whether these models for the history of country creation and the presence or absence of pre-colonial identities can help explain the modern history and nature of these states in the Arab Spring and the years thereafter. Then, a more tentative attempt is made to apply these models to two countries of the Arab east, Syria and Iraq. While local variations ensure that no model can be transferred directly, it can show the importance of studying the historical factors that go into the transition from geographical region to a country with people that can form the basis of a nation.

This study aims to examine the impact of national culture on classification shifting in Eastern European Member States of EU Eastern European countries (EEU) vis-à-vis the Western Member States of EU (WEU). The EEU provides a unique sample to study the quality of financial reporting that the authors measure with classification shifting given that for more than five decades they were following the model of a centrally planned economy, where market-based financial reporting was absent. Yet, the EEU transitioned to a market-based economy and completed its accession to the EU.

This study uses a panel data set of firm year observations from 1996 and 2020 that covers the full transition of EEU. This empirical analysis is based on fixed effects panel regression analysis where the authors report a plethora of identifications.

This study finds classification shifting in the EEU countries since their transition to the market-based economy, though they have no long record of market-based financial reporting. This study also notices that cultural factors are associated with classification shifting across all Member States of the EU. This study further examines the impact of interactions between cultural characteristics and special items and reveal variability between WEU and EEU. As part of the robustness analysis, this study also tests the impact of culture on real earnings management measures for both WEU vs EEU, confirming the variability of the impact of culture on earnings management.

Future research could explore the role of religion differences in WEU vis-à-vis EEU states, as they are also subject to cultural differences.

The findings are important for regulators, external monitors and investors, as they show that cultural factors affect earnings management with some variability across countries in the EU, and they should be acknowledged in policymaking.

The findings show that cultural differences between EEU and the “old” Member States of the EU could explain classification shifting.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that sheds light on the impact of national culture on classification shifting in EEU of EU vis-à-vis the “old” WEU of EU.

Open innovation (OI), by now one of the major concepts for the analysis of innovation, is seen as a methodology for collaboratively designing and implementing solutions by engaging stakeholders in an iterative and inclusive service design process. This paper aims to empirically investigate OI capacities, defined as a cooperative, knowledge-sharing innovation ecosystem, and to explore how it can lead to improved performance of firms in Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Southeastern European (SEE) countries.

The study builds on the World Bank/European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD’s) Business Environment Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) dataset for 2009, 2013 and 2019. Primarily, the research model was estimated using log-transformed ordinary least squares (OLS). Taking into consideration that this method might produce substantial bias, yielding misleading inferences, this study is fitting Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimators with robust standard errors and instrumental variable/generalized method of moments estimation (IV/GMM) approach for comparative results. Secondarily, the research model was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) to investigate the relationship between five OI capacities and firm performance.

The findings indicate that there is a significant positive relationship between most OI capacities and firm performance, except for innovation, which did not show a statistically significant relationship with firm performance. Specifically, research and development (R&D), knowledge and coopetition are statistically significant and positively associated with firm performance, whereas transformation is statistically significant but negatively associated with firm performance. The IV/GMM estimations’ findings support the view that the firm performance is significantly affected by OI capacities, together with some control variables such as size, age, foreign ownership and year dummy to have a significant impact on firm performance.

This paper fills an identified gap in the literature by investigating the impact of OI on firm performance executed in the specific CEE and SEE country context.

The polarisation of employment is a specific structural change in the labour market when the share of high and low-skilled workers increases and, simultaneously, the share of middle-skilled workers decreases. The chapter analyses the effect of polarisation in Czechia and other Central European countries and describes how employment has changed from the perspective of skills regarding gender. The analysis is based on observing the changes in the share of high, middle and low-skilled workers evaluated on the basis of occupational classification over time. Results imply (with a few exceptions) polarisation of employment across all countries during the period between 1998 and 2021, even if we consider the distinction between males and females. Results confirm that employment polarisation has also become a prevalent phenomenon in Central European countries during the last two decades. Finally, this chapter also summarises the economic motivation for studying polarisation phenomenon.

This chapter elaborates on the main factors of the adverse macroeconomic development in Czechia and Europe. Currently, i.e. from 2022, Czechia mainly suffers from double-digit galloping inflation and GDP stagnation. The aim of this chapter is to identify and describe the influence of the main factors from the present and the more distant past on current inflation and approaching stagflation in Czechia. This chapter analyzes an unfavourable mix of demand and supply factors that leave the new banking board of the CNB facing a dilemma, that is, whether to pursue a disinflationary policy of increasing interest rates and thus push the Czech economy closer into recession or to rely on demand-driven economic growth, which will keep unemployment at a low level, but at the same time contribute to inflationary pressures. The new governor of the CNB completely changed the strategy of his predecessor and, despite strong criticism, did not raise interest rates even once. Based on the analysis of inflationary factors, this chapter tries to explain the motives for the Central Bank's new strategy in the fight against inflation, which is the systematic appreciation of the Czech koruna.

As women’s position in the economy and society is often explained by cultural factors, this study aims to verify whether the observed changes in female empowerment in the region of Central and East European (CEE) countries of the European Union (EU) are associated with masculinity as a cultural trait.

The authors apply the k-means clustering method to group CEE countries into clusters with similar levels of female empowerment in two time points – 2013 and 2019. Next, the authors examine the clusters and cross-reference them with the national culture’s masculinity to explore the interrelations between female empowerment and cultural traits in the CEE countries and their development in time.

The analyses reveal that female empowerment is not uniform or stable across the CEE countries. The masculinity level is not strongly related to women’s position in these countries, and changes in female empowerment are not closely linked to masculinity.

Despite the tumultuous history of women’s empowerment in the CEE countries, the issues related to gender equality and cultural traits pertaining to the region are relatively understudied in the literature. By focusing on the CEE region, the authors fill the gap in examining the independencies between female empowerment and cultural masculinity.