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Although the significance of technological progress in economic development is well-established in theory and policy, it has remained challenging to agree upon shared priorities for strategies and policies. This paper aims to develop a model of how policymakers can develop effective and easy to communicate strategies for science, technology and economic development.

By integrating insights from economic complexity, competitiveness and foresight literature, a replicable research framework for analysing the opportunities and challenges of technological revolutions for small catching-up countries is developed. The authors highlight key lessons from piloting this framework for informing the strategy and policies for bioeconomy in Estonia towards 2030–2050.

The integration of economic complexity research with traditional foresight methods establishes a solid analytical basis for a data-driven analysis of the opportunities for industrial upgrading. The increase in the importance of regional alliances in the global economy calls for further advancement of the analytical toolbox. Integration of complexity, global value chains and export potential assessment approaches offers valuable direction for further research, as it enables discussion of the opportunities of moving towards more knowledge-intensive economic activities along with the opportunities for winning international market share.

The research merges insights from the economic complexity, competitiveness and foresight literature in a novel way and illustrates the applicability and priority-setting in a real-life setting.

This paper aims to investigate the cultural meanings of excessive drinking in three different countries with different levels of alcohol use chosen as case studies of wider geographies representing Northern (Denmark), Southern (Italy) and Eastern (Estonia) Europe.

Data were collected according to the Reception Analytical Group Interview method, using video clips as stimuli to enhance comparability. Eight online focus groups were organized in each country for a total number of 128 participants. Symbolic boundaries defining what drinking patterns are socially acceptable were then analysed to look at cross-national variations.

Results show how different conceptualizations of excessive drinking persist, although a convergence process among drinking patterns is also observed, which suggests that differences mainly depend on meanings and values attributed to intoxication. These are both rooted in the traditional drinking cultures and affected by ongoing social and economic change processes.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability, even at country level, as there are differences also within the same drinking culture; however, addressing these differences was beyond the scope of the present study, which aimed to contribute to understanding persisting differences in European drinking culture despite different drivers seem to act for globalization of drinking habits.

The paper includes implications for the development of tailored and effective prevention messages, considering rooted attitudes and cultural values attached to drinking and drunkenness in different European geographies, which are also related to conceptualizations of risks and pleasure.

This paper fulfils an identified need to understand persisting differences in alcohol-related behaviours and outcome in different European countries emerging from quantitative data.

Consumer culture is promoting immediate gratification, and the rise of digital financial services is increasing the risk of indebtedness while debt reduces well-being and affects mental health. The authors assess the effects of consumer information provision, debt literacy, chronic debt and attitudes toward debt on the intent to purchase on credit.

An online survey including an experiment with a credit offer vignette was conducted in a representative sample of Estonia (n = 1204). Treatment conditions depicted either the total cost and duration of the credit agreement or the annual percentage rate.

Receiving modified information resulted in a 26 to 30 percentage points decrease in propensity to purchase on credit. Purchasing on credit was associated with attitudes towards credit and chronic debt, but not with debt literacy.

The findings reveal large effects of information provision and highlight the limited effects of debt literacy on credit decisions. Limitations may emerge from differences in financial regulation across countries.

The authors' results highlight the importance of applying behavioural insights in consumer credit information provision, both in the financial sector and policy. Testing the messages allows having evidence-based solutions that promote responsible purchasing on credit.

The findings call for changes in credit information provision requirements. Their effect is significantly larger compared to the literature, emphasizing the role of credit information provision in less regulated online markets.

The study's objective is to estimate the association of specific perceived employer-provided benefits on employees' intention to leave in different age cohorts during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Informed by the psychological theories of ageing, the authors propose three age-cohort-specific hypotheses in three motivational domains: security and health benefits, flexible work arrangement and education-related benefits.

The authors use a large survey of employees in Estonia (n = 7,209) conducted in 2020 and test the association of specific benefits and their interactions with age on employees' intention to leave.

The results show that older cohorts are generally less prone to leave their jobs. Benefits that employers could use during the COVID-19 crisis generally had negative associations with the intention to leave, but age-specific differences were negligible; only the perceived provision of flexible work arrangements reduced the younger cohort's intention to leave relatively more.

This study is one of the few that allows us to make inferences regarding the benefits preferences amongst the working population during an unprecedented health crisis.

This paper investigates the relationship of both technological (product and process) and non-technological (organizational and marketing) innovation with the gender wage gap at firms.

Using employer–employee level data from Estonia, the authors estimate Mincerian wage equations, in order to show how innovation at the firm level is associated with the gender wage gap. Next, the authors use propensity score matching (PSM) to study the effects of the movement of men and women into innovative firms, how this shapes the gender wage gap at firms.

The authors find that both technological and non-technological innovation are associated with a larger gender wage gap at firms. The relationship between innovation and the contemporaneous gender wage gap at firms reflects to a significant extent the different selection of men and women with different time-invariant characteristics to innovative firms. Further, the authors find that movement of men and women to work at innovative firms is in longer term associated with larger gains in wages for men. The authors also observe that the relationship of innovation with gender wage gap is stronger in the case of women with children.

Much of the prior analysis focuses on the effects of technological innovation on gender-related labour market outcomes. The authors show here that the relationship of innovation at firms with higher gender wage gap is not only specific to technological innovation, but is more general, and is observed across different types of innovation indicators, including non-technological innovation. This study's results suggest that the effects of innovation on gender wage gap may reflect to an extent the higher demand for flexibility of employees for work purposes at innovative firms, which may increase the gender wage gap, especially between men and women with children.

The article aims to elucidate the impact that neoliberal tourism development has had on the living environment of the Old Town of Tallinn through the perceptions of residents and property owners.

This article's empirical analysis is based on a sociological survey conducted amongst 338 residents and property owners of Tallinn Old Town.

The research showed quite low tourism tolerance amongst the residents of Tallinn Old Town, the host community, in comparison to the city's residents in general. Half of the residents estimated the tourism load to be too heavy during the high season before the pandemic. The differences in perceptions based on geographical location indicated that people who lived in the most touristic areas of the Old Town were more critical about all aspects about their living environment.

The article provides a detailed insight into the social impact of tourism in a historical urban area, where the post-socialist neoliberal context has enabled unrestricted tourism growth and increasing vulnerability of the local community. The roots of these processes can be traced back to Soviet urban and housing policies. The case exemplifies the significance of local time-space specificities to be considered in building an understanding of contemporary touristification and its impact on local communities in heritage areas.

Despite the unique features and potential applications in various industries, widespread blockchain adoption is hindered for several reasons. One of them is the lack of government regulations regarding blockchain and cryptocurrencies. However, a deliberate preliminary analysis of the policy initiatives by various jurisdictions proved otherwise, and a lack of sound academic literature on the policy initiatives on blockchain worldwide was evident. Addressing this gap, this study aims to summarize the policy initiatives of jurisdictions around the world, assessing if governments do not enact many regulations.

A systematic literature review was adopted in this study, in which the authors shortlisted a set of research papers and policy reports using several selection criteria and a screening process.

It was found that numerous policy initiatives have been enacted by governments worldwide, and blockchain applications are also being piloted or practiced successfully in several nations. It was also evident that governments are reluctant to accept cryptocurrencies as legal tender while embracing their underlying technology, blockchain.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper appears to be one of the first attempts to summarize the blockchain policy initiatives contributing to the body of knowledge on blockchain adoption.

The social inclusion of immigrants has been a central public policy issue in European countries, and entrepreneurship is often promoted as a form of integration. Female immigrants face double discrimination of gender and ethnicity while becoming entrepreneurs. The aim of the paper is to investigate the female empowerment in the host country as a predictor of immigrant women engagement in entrepreneurship.

Based on panel data for European Union countries for years 2006–2021, female immigrant entrepreneurship was modelled by the impact of variables showing the empowerment of women in host countries. Data availability was the determinant regarding the inclusion of 22 countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden were all in the research sample.

Although immigrant entrepreneurship is highly context-oriented and locale-specific (as in the physical setting for relationships among people), some universal patterns for a group of countries are found. A stronger political and managerial position of power for the women in host countries encourages female immigrant entrepreneurship, while the gender pay gap is statistically insignificant.

The originality of the paper is due to the multi-country level and female-focused research perspectives in immigrant entrepreneurship. The study refers to the intersectionality of gender and ethnicity, arguing that the empowerment of women in host countries affects female immigrant entrepreneurship at the macro-level.

Considering the increasing interest devoted to knowledge hiding in the workplace and academic research, the aim of this study is to analyze the existing literature on knowledge hiding to understand and trace how it has evolved over time and to uncover emerging areas for future research.

The study used performance analysis and science mapping to analyze a sample of 243 studies published between 2005 and 2022. The study focused on analyzing the scientific productivity of articles, themes and authors.

The results of performance and science mapping analysis indicate that the concept of knowledge hiding behavior evolved recently and a majority of the studies have been conducted in the past decade. The study found that knowledge hiding is still in its infancy and has been studied in relation to other themes such as knowledge sharing, knowledge management, knowledge withholding and knowledge transfer. The study identified emerging themes, productive authors and countries, affiliations, collaboration network of authors, countries and institutions and co-occurrence of keywords.

Compared to the recent developments in the knowledge hiding behavior, the present study is more comprehensive in terms of the methods and databases used. The results of the study contribute to the existing literature on knowledge hiding and knowledge withholding.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the adoption and quality of integrated reports in the European Union (EU).

The sample consists of 147 listed firms from the 18 EU countries during 2013–2020. This study creates a disclosure index – based on the balanced scorecard (BSC) that reflects the information content of integrated reports. The content analysis method is used to measure the integrated reporting quality (IRQ).

The findings demonstrate that the IRQ increased across the study’s time frame, going from 49.3% in 2013 to 77% in 2020. Furthermore, financial disclosures still get the most attention in the integrated reporting (IR), followed by learning and growth perspective disclosures. In addition, businesses in the financial and industrial sectors rely more on integrated reports. However, the utility sector has the highest IRQ score. By country, Spain has the highest rate of IR adoption, followed by France. Other countries, such as Austria and Hungary, have only implemented IR by one company each.

This study adds to the IR literature a new approach to measure IRQ by linking BSC with the IR framework. Empirically, businesses of any size can use this method to assess the degree of balance between the revealed financial and nonfinancial information in their reports.

Empirically, this study helps IR practitioners in determining how widely IR is used in Europe and in updating the database on the IR website. It helps them update and improve the IR framework by identifying the elements that have the least transparency and quality, investigating the causes and enhancing them.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the IRQ in EU countries by linking the BSC with IR elements. This is to split the elements into their own pillars, making it easier to track disclosure and evaluate the corporations’ interest in revealing these perspectives, on their own and collectively.