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This paper aims to analyze the potential variables explaining the compliance value added tax (VAT) gap, which basically represents an estimate of the unpaid VAT in the economy. A major component of compliance VAT Gap is represented by tax fraud; there exist other causes too, like insolvencies, bankruptcies, optimizations practices and maladministration. The objective of our paper is to revisit the main determinants of the VAT compliance gap for the European Union (EU)-27 member states. Using econometric modeling, our study identifies the relationship between the VAT gap and various determinants of it.

Our work focuses on the shadow economy, final consumption, VAT revenues, standard VAT rates, differences between the standard and reduced rates, economic prosperity, press freedom, political stability and others, as determinants of European VAT compliance gaps, for the 2005–2020 time interval. The methods include panel data analysis through simple and multiple regression modeling, the combinatorial approach, fixed and random effects.

Our study validates the direct impact of shadow economy and the indirect impact of VAT revenues, economic prosperity and press freedom, upon VAT compliance gaps. Upon subsampling of EU member states within old and new ones, our results estimate a larger positive impact of shadow economy upon old member states, compared to new ones.

The policy implications include leverage effects of governments acting upon a reduction in shadow economy phenomena and boosts of economic development, political stability and press freedom, in order to attain the contraction of compliance VAT gaps.

Our paper sheds light in a poorly explored scientific area, that of the determinants of VAT gap, especially in relationship with financial and economic crime phenomena.

When there is freedom of press, newspapers provide prying eyes that investigate and report the malfeasance by public officials. More prying eyes together with more newspaper readership make monitoring of public officials by the public easier and cheaper. This paper aims to investigate the role of newspapers in helping the public observe the conduct of local officials fearful of discovery of malfeasance by the newspaper readers in the USA during 1978 – 2008 when the internet was still a fledgling source of news.

A model that recognize that corruption is an agency problem that thrives in the absence of monitoring of public officials is used. The estimation technique used address problems issuing from the subjective nature of measures of press freedom and perception of corruption, and the persistence of corruption over time.

More newspapers and newspaper readers help to alleviate the agency problem that underlies public corruption in the USA and elsewhere. More newspapers (i.e. more journalists) act to deter corruption at the margin, and, ceteris paribus, higher readership works on exposing corrupt acts and helps to convict the errant officials in larger numbers.

The paper provides a timely context to consider the implication of sharp fall in local newspapers as well as newspaper readership all across the USA.

This paper extends the literature by considering press freedom, the number of newspapers and size of newspaper readership as joint determinants of public corruption.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between media reporting and violent extremism to explain the ethical and security issues emanating from it in Nigeria.

This paper draws on security and ethical literature, while a multimethod approach consisting of in-depth and focus group interviews was used. Content analysis was also relied upon from the interviews granted by media experts on terrorism, security and ethics.

Findings revealed that journalists are facing problems in areas of freedom of expression, framing, content selection and personal security. Again, this paper opines that elements of public awareness and issues of relevance also push the media to excessive reporting in which ethics and security must stand to play a restraining role.

The first limitation of this paper is the inability to interview some terrorists and know their reaction to mass media reporting on their activities because nobody is ready to own up that he is a terrorist and to point to an individual as a terrorist is a dangerous phenomenon. Again, not all reporters are ready for interviews because of the fact that they are not prepared for the academic exercise but rather for assignments that can yield fat money such as selling secret information to those who can buy them with huge amounts of money like the politicians.

There is a threat to life on both sides of the government and terrorists. Favoring one side in their report is an offense from another side. There is also a violation of their human rights in freedom of speech as a result of the political situation in Nigeria where the government is faced with insecurity that hinders media from freedom of the press to publish reports. Moreover, where the ethical issue is suppressed, it makes the government unpopular all over the world because of the lack of press freedom.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is novel as being the first of its kind where media experts are involved in research attempts on media reporting and violent extremism in relation to security and ethical issues in Nigeria.

This study aims to contribute to the existing literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) by examining the influence of national media environments on the economic consequences of CSR. Drawing on signaling theory, this study distinguishes between two country-level media environments − digital media accessibility and media freedom − of which the prior research has often implied their value in cultivating the stakeholders’ awareness about the firms’ socially responsible behavior, suggesting that they amplify the benefits of CSR actions.

This study conducts multilevel analysis with a sample of 44,222 firm-year observations representing 6,726 companies from 57 countries over the period 2003–2019.

This study finds supportive evidence that CSR is more positively related to financial gains in countries with greater digital media accessibility. This study concludes that digital media accessibility affects a firm’s reputation and legitimacy benefits derived from CSR actions, resulting in better financial performance (FP).

The findings of this paper contribute to the existing literature on the CSR–FP relationship by demonstrating the relevance of considering the media environment to better explain the link between CSR and FP. In doing so, this study enriches our understanding of the importance of the media at macro-level institutions by examining how and why these media environments cultivate a culture of CSR as a strategic tool for firms.

This article problematizes the concept of freedom rooted in liberalism, examining the detention of historian Ilan Pappe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at Detroit Airport in the United States as an emblematic case study.

The research adopts a methodological triangulation approach, based on an analysis that combines data about the event and theories about the concept of freedom, problematizing authors who focused on the relationship between the individual and society in a liberal context, where individualism serves as the basis for specific conceptions of social relations.

Through the use of authors such as John Stuart Mill and John Locke, as well as the contributions of authors like Norbert Elias, it is argued that true freedom is relational, rooted in social interdependencies and the social construction of an individuality that is not individualistic but intrinsically linked to collective aspects.

Pappe’s case illustrates the tensions between individual freedom and collective interests, highlighting the need to reassess freedom of expression in complex political and social contexts.

This article proposes a more inclusive and interconnected view of human freedom, where individual and collective interests are negotiated within a dynamic web of social relations.

This paper aims to contend that populism is damaging to both domestic and international politics; not only does it erode liberal democracy in established democracies but also fuels authoritarianism in despotic regimes and aggravates conflicts and crises in international system.

The research is divided into two main sections. First, it examines how populist mobilization affects liberal democracy, and refutes the claims that populism is beneficial and reinforcing to democracy. Second, it attempts to demonstrate how populism is damaging to domestic politics (by undermining liberal democracy and supporting authoritarianism) as well as international relations (by making interstate conflicts more likely to materialize). Theoretically, populism is assumed to be a strategy used by politicians to maximize their interest. Hence, populism is a strategy used by politicians to mobilize constituents using the main features of populist discourse.

The research argues that populism has detrimental consequences on both domestic and international politics; it undermines liberal democracy in democratic countries, upsurges authoritarianism in autocratic regimes and heightens the level of conflict and crises in international politics. Populism can lead to authoritarianism. There is one major undemocratic trait shared by all populist waves around the world, particularly democracies; that is anti-pluralism/anti-institutions. Populist leaders perceive foreign policy as the continuation of domestic politics, because they consider themselves as the only true representatives of the people. Therefore, populist actors abandon any political opposition as necessarily illegitimate, with repercussions on foreign policy.

Some scholars argue that populism reinforces democracy by underpinning its ability to include marginalized sectors of the society and to decrease voter apathy, the research refuted these arguments. Populism is destructive to world democracy; populists are reluctant to embrace the idea of full integration with other nations. Populists reject the idea of open borders, and reckon it an apparent threat to their national security. The research concludes that populists consider maximizing their national interests on the international level by following confrontational policies instead of cooperative ones.