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The purpose of this paper is to review policy or guidance on the implementation of Section 5(4) written by NHS mental health trusts in England and health boards in Wales.

A Freedom of Information request was submitted to all trusts in England (n=57) and health boards in Wales (n=7) asking them to provide a copy of any policy or guidance on the implementation of Section 5(4). Documents were analysed using content analysis. Specific attention was given to any deviations from the national Mental Health Act Codes of Practice.

In total, 41 (67.2 per cent) organisations had a policy on the implementation of Section 5(4). There was a high level of consistency between local guidance and the Mental Health Act Codes of Practice. There were however; different interpretations of the guidance and errors that could lead to misuse of the section. Some policies contained useful guidance that could be adopted by future versions of the national Codes of Practice.

The research has demonstrated the value of examining the relationship between national and local guidance. Further research should be undertaken on the frequency and reasons for any reuse of the section.

Greater attention should be given to considering the necessity of local policy, given the existence of national Codes of Practice.

This is the only research examining the policy framework for the implementation of Section 5(4).

This chapter focuses on the impact of national economic conditions and voters’ attitudes on the positioning of European national political parties with regard to the European Union (EU). We provide an empirical analysis based on data gathered through the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) covering parties from 14 European countries observed over the 1999–2010 time span. We perform a regression analysis where the dependent variable measures the position of political parties vis-à-vis EU integration and explanatory variables include a number of measures of national economic conditions, features of the national political and institutional framework and voters’ Euroscepticism. Fixed effect, ordered logit and fractional logit estimates provide the following main results. Compared with other parties, non-mainstream political parties and those acting in established economies are more prone to mirror citizens’ Eurosceptic sentiments. National economic conditions such as inflation as well as gross domestic product (GDP) growth affect mainstream party support for the EU. Smaller and ideologically extreme parties are, on average, less supportive of European integration.

After the great economic crisis of 2008 the absolute outcome of which is still argued, the topic of alternative investment possibilities, such as business angels, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer investments, were broadly highlighted in the European Union member states. Few suggest that in spite of the floating understanding of the topic, alternative investments managed to significantly increase the access to finance for start-ups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) providing the overall support to economic recovery. The positive effects of alternative investment market development is now a matter of fact – recent studies suggest European alternative finance market to reach 2,957 million of euro by 2014. On the other hand, the absence of overall awareness of entrepreneurs about the alternative investment possibilities, still weak legislative regulation, market specifics, and other challenges alike are hindrances that do persist. The main aim of this paper is, while acknowledging the key aspects of crowdfunding, to form a grounded understanding to what extent crowdfunding might support SMEs on their way to solve the challenges of access to finance. In order to reach the goal of the research an analysis of investment specifics, prior experience of the crowdfunding investments as well as core financial needs of SMEs will be acknowledged. The main finding of the paper suggests that crowdfunding while being an excellent tool for social or entertainment project financing can hardly be a significant financing tool for the European SMEs.

The analysis of the main stages of the Belarusian economy's development from 2000 to 2018 has been carried out, the main factors and limitations of economic growth considered. The known models of economic growth applied to the Belarusian economy are shown. It is grounded that the correct use of endogenous growth models based on production functions is hampered by the significant influence of exogenous factors on the Belarusian economy, and it is more preferable to use models based on the balance of payments under these conditions. The methodology for modeling the balanced economic growth based on Input–Output tables' data is proposed, the results of its use are shown. Three scenarios for the growth of the Belarusian economy until 2025 are analyzed: baseline, adverse, and target; the desired structural changes are identified for the implementation of the target scenario.

This chapter argues that the key Eurozone imbalances are not a failure of nation states. At the heart of the integration process is the convergence criteria – limits on government deficit, debt, interest rate, inflation, etc. While these were intended to eliminate asymmetries across countries, the conception of convergence was too narrow since the euro designers completely ignored the elephant in the room – that countries were on different technological frontiers. I show that this difference is an important determinant of the key macroeconomic imbalances across the Eurozone. It follows that the primary convergence criterion should be limits on non-price competitive gaps across countries. The chapter overturns the simplistic view of price competitiveness and illustrate that the regulating forces of competition originate from productive structures.

Purpose: The purpose of the chapter is to determine the specifics of making of managerial decisions in business systems of modern countries of Europe, to compile a European model of decision making in modern business systems, and to determine its capabilities for ensuring optimal decisions.

Methodology: The authors use the method of systemic and problem analysis, the method of comparative analysis (for comparing the European practice of managerial decisions to practices of other regions of the world), and the methods of modeling and formalization.

Conclusions: A European model of making of managerial decisions in modern business systems is compiled; it has the following peculiarities: collective offering, discussing, and making managerial decisions; presence of independent marketing committee that conducts systemic marketing; internal communications of business entities only with the production committee; and sustainability of horizontal connections between committees with the linear organizational structure.

Originality/value: Due to determined peculiarities, such advantages of the European model as making of well-balanced managerial decisions from positions of all interested parties, low expenditures for decision making due to usage of internal outsource, high effectiveness of marketing activities, and integration of managerial staff that allows solving current problems of the business system are achieved. However, in the European model, the process of making of managerial decisions is the longest as compared to other studied regional models. That's why application of the European model of decision making in modern business systems allows achieving high effectiveness of this process in a period of stability, and in case of downward wave of economic cycle, this model cannot ensure high effectiveness of managerial decisions.

The contribution of the Greek transport industry to the country's GDP has been well over the EU average. The industry is of vital importance to the efficient operation of local, national, and international economic transactions and is responsible for almost half of the value added to the Greek economy by its tourism industry. Despite its significant contribution to Greek economy, the industry is facing challenges and has not achieved its full potential. This chapter provides an overview of the transportation and storage industry and examines its general institutional framework and its overall performance, before focusing on specific policy issues for each transport mode, namely air, rail, road, and maritime transport.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of the Great Recession (2008-2014) on the labor market profiles and integration process in the European Union (EU26) and in the 12 historical Eurozone countries.

This study assesses the impact of the crisis, and applies multivariate statistical methods containing a principal component analysis and an agglomerative hierarchical clustering. Two non-overlapping sub-periods are established: a pre-crisis (1999-2007) period and a crisis (2008-2014) period, and eight European indicators are considered.

The results are threefold. First, they bring strong evidence of a significant impact of the crisis on the process of integration. Second, they interestingly reveal more heterogeneity in the aftermath of the crisis across the EU countries, while more homogeneity across the Eurozone countries. Third, this apparent homogenization is accompanied by a polarization process into two main groups of countries including Spain, Portugal, Finland and the Netherlands in one group while the rest of the Eurozone in the other.

This study is unique as it does not only present a snapshot of the challenges posed by the Great Recession to the European Union and Eurozone labor market profiles, but it also assesses its impact on their integration process. In addition, using the, suitable yet ignored, multivariate statistical methods on the latest data to study such an impact is another contribution of this paper.

The purpose of this study is to analyze crowdfunding (CF) as new entrepreneurial finance (EF) tool and to predict the success of CF projects in the Middle East region.

This study was conducted in seven Middle Eastern countries (i.e. Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and UAE) in addition to serval CF platforms that are commonly used by crowd funders in this region (such as Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Beehive and Zoomal) with total members (195,193). A pilot sample of 20 units was used to validate and verify the research instrument of the study. The research sample consists of 1,910 respondents from the seven countries included in the study. The study emphasizes the partners, micro-structures, administrative conditions and CF advancement in the Middle East.

The findings reveal that CF’s presence positively impacts fundraising success and that CF platforms are an effective financial technology (Fintech) tool for financing entrepreneurs in the Middle East. The study shows that the success of CF projects in the Middle East can be anticipated by estimating and breaking down enormous information of web-based and social media movement, human resources of funders and online venture introduction. The authors conclude with recommendations for future EF and CF research.

This study aims to analyze the CF and EF principles in the Middle East region as the CF experience and practice in this part of the world tend to be unexplored in terms of research. Presently a very few numbers published research on CF exists. Moreover, to the best of the knowledge, there is no single study investigating CF as an alternative financing source in the Middle East. In particular, the study.

The purpose of this paper is to add to the debate concerning the merits of export promotion efforts by governments by investigating the effect of export promotion program (EPP) participation on the export performance of Dutch small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The authors confront participation data of an EPP targeting SMEs with rich firm-level data and use propensity score matching techniques combined with regression analysis.

The authors show that exports generated by participants do generally rise in the years after program entry, however, export growth does not outpace that of comparable, but unsupported firms. Nonetheless, there is some evidence suggesting that export shares in sales rise faster among program entrants, particularly in the first and second years after participation. Furthermore, the authors present evidence suggesting that the probability of becoming a permanent exporter is higher for participants relative to beginning exporters that did not receive support from the program.

The analysis contributes to the still relatively small literature dealing with the impact of government export promotion instruments on export performance using firm-level micro-data. The subject of analysis are Dutch small businesses. SMEs, particularly operating in advanced economies, are a group that is not frequently considered separately in this respect.