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Purpose and need for study: Considering that the impact of digitalisation on the energy industry is currently one of the hot topics, our focus was to systematically overview the literature on this subject and subtract the most relevant papers. This study may represent a base for future research on the impact digitalisation has on the efficiency of energy industries and the sustainable development of economies counting on this industry.

Methodology: The authors employed a methodology of bibliometric analysis to help us reveal the main concepts reflecting the relationship between digitalisation and sustainable development in the energy industry and also to identify the most cited papers in the literature.

Findings: The most important concepts are digitalisation and also digitisation, sustainability and sustainable development, energy efficiency, the internet of things and Industry 4.0. For the more focussed research in business, technological development, urban development, smart cities and renewable energies proved to be very important concepts. The co-authorship networks revealed as most important 10–20 papers, considering that our analysis was based on a comprehensive list of papers in all domains (116 papers indexed in Scopus) and on a list of academic papers published in Social Sciences or Business, Economics and Accounting domains (59 papers indexed in Scopus).

Practical implications: This study evidenced the authors with the most valuable research on the topic of digitalisation and sustainable development in the energy sector, helping us continue our research in the future, with a quantitative study that will base its literature review on the most accountable and cited papers published so far in the literature. The national plans and public policies for sustainable development have a common ground when they refer to energy industries. The investments and digital development need to have a positive social impact improving health and well-being for citizens, supporting the quality of life, based on a fair transition to low-carbon economies.

Aim: This chapter aims to examine the connection between government policies and entrepreneurial dimensions present in 13 European Union member countries, over the period 2002–2019. As long as the policies represent a set of decisions and actions issued by state-run structures, bodies with political, legislative, and financial authority to act to deal with a matter of public interest, this study overviews how intervention channels and policy instruments act upon supporting entrepreneurship.

Method: The methodology employed consists of correlations, principal component analysis (PCA), and regression models, in order to emphasise the statistically significant relationships between governance indicators and several entrepreneurial dimensions (financing for entrepreneurs, taxes and bureaucracy, basic school entrepreneurial education and training), and also the robustness of the results.

Results and Discussion: After observing the correlations evidencing strong relationships between the governance indicators, the results from PCA returned two main components for the Worldwide Governance Indicators: one incorporates the direct effect of control of corruption, government effectiveness, voice and accountability, regulatory quality, and rule of law, while the second component is based on political stability and absence of violence/terrorism factor. Results proved that governance has a significant impact on the financing available for entrepreneurs, especially from the first principal component, while taxes and regulations applied to new businesses have more impact in supporting entrepreneurship in countries with lower political stability levels. The consistent regression results emphasised that entrepreneurs feel more support from an institutional environment and more financing opportunities in an economy characterised by good governance, and taxes and regulations applied to new businesses have more impact in supporting entrepreneurship in countries with lower political stability levels.

Originality/Value: This study contributes to the literature studying the role of government policies on economic growth, by bringing more insights on the governance aspects and policies which are more favourable to productive entrepreneurship.

This chapter aims to examine the influence of governance on entrepreneurship in several countries, members of the European Union, in 2012–2017. The selection of the countries was based on human development index and expected years of schooling criteria, thus considering several sustainable development goals, involving the governments’ roles, the private sector, civil society, and citizens. The empirical analysis consisted of correlations, principal component analysis, and regression models. The Pearson correlation coefficient evidenced a series of negative relationships, statistically significant, between the governance indicators and business demography. The principal component analysis returned two main components for our database: the main one incorporates five governance proxies (control of corruption, rule of law, regulatory framework, government effectiveness, and political stability), while the second component is based on the voice and accountability. Therefore, the first governance component is more related to the public sector, while the second one reflects the involvement of civil society. The regression analysis considered besides the ordinary least squares model, the fixed effects and random effects model to emphasize whether or not differences across countries would impact the regression results. Several entrepreneurship variables were employed as dependent variables: business demography, high growth enterprise rates by employment, employer enterprise net growth, and business demography by size class. The consistent regression results emphasized an indirect impact from public governance toward high growth enterprise rates by employment and employer enterprise net growth. Based on our findings, the main conclusion is that public policies do not support entrepreneurship or the national context for entrepreneurs’ development. Moreover, the citizens’ involvement and their opportunities to participate in public decisions in terms of supporting entrepreneurship are also limited.

In the spirit of ‘Europe of the Regions’, local authorities are responsible for responding to the main interests, needs and preferences of the country’s citizens. Regional and local administrative authorities provide citizens with the necessary public goods, which reflect the trend towards ‘glocalisation’ in public administration at the European level, more significantly in the states in which the political system recently became democratic. With this background, the effectiveness of local self-government depends not only on local authorities’ decision-making freedom but also on (financial) support for it through decentralisation, and the member states of the European Union (EU) employ different strategies to achieve the same goal, with varying degrees of success. Within this context, our chapter offers a comparative analysis of the administrative, financial and local self-government decentralisation in member states, which include the southern and eastern regions on the outer edges of the EU. The general goal of our study is to identify the main trends in the present administrations and their challenges, as well as best practices that can offer lessons to other member states which are reforming their administration through decentralisation. In addition to the identified challenges, solutions and best practices, our study reveals a tendency towards consolidation at the level of regional government not only in the terms of legal responsibility but also of administrative budgets, thus generating an assumption of improvement in the general quality of governance in the member states.