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This study aims to explore the research internationalization process in Georgia, one of the post-Soviet countries. Specifically, it examines the individual-level reasons that motivate faculty at Georgian universities to engage in the process of research internationalization. It also unpacks scholars’ perspectives on the driving factors for selecting the key partners in international research.

Sixteen faculty members for this exploratory qualitative study were selected through stratified purposeful sampling from five higher educational institutions in Georgia. Participants were asked to discuss their participation in international research projects and underline the activities and events that motivated them to participate in international collaborative projects. The critical incident method was used to analyze our qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews.

The research revealed that faculty at Georgian universities are more oriented toward collaboration with their peers from European countries and the USA. This preference is influenced by such factors as higher quality of science, higher level of freedom and autonomy, personal contacts and networks, as well as language competencies. The data also helped to unpack Georgian scholars’ individual-level rationales that were conceptualized into three domains: human capital, financial capital and physical capital.

This study is an original work conducted in Georgia. It contributes to the development of the field of internationalization of research. The three-domain conceptual framework on the individual-level rationale for internationalization can be used in future research on post-Soviet countries and beyond.

This paper embarks on revealing the main factors behind the intentions of youth in Lithuania to get involved in bribery.

A questionnaire survey of 432 respondents served as a source of primary data. The structural equation modelling – partial least squares techniques was employed as a main research tool.

It was revealed that youth in Lithuania display a high value congruity with their counterparts in Western Europe and a relatively reluctant to offer bribes. It can be stated that youths’ positive attitude towards some shadow economy activities is a forced response to government failures, rather than an intrinsic motivation created by cultural legacy or psychological issues.

It is one of the first scientific attempt to investigate reasons behind the formation of the positive attitude towards bribery and intentions to get involved in bribery among the youth.

This article presents the results of a quantitative analysis of Ukrainian arts and humanities (A&H) research from 2012 to 2021, as observed in Scopus. The overall publication activity and the relative share of A&H publications in relation to Ukraine's total research output, comparing them with other countries. The study analyzes the diversity and total number of sources, as well as the geographic distribution of authors and citing authors, to provide insights into the internationalization level of Ukrainian A&H research. Additionally, the topical spectrum and language usage are considered to complete the overall picture.

This study uses the Scopus database as the primary data source for analyzing the general bibliometric characteristics of Ukrainian A&H research. All document types, except Erratum, were considered. A language filter was applied to compare the bibliometric characteristics of English versus non-English publications. In addition to directly imported data from Scopus, the study employs the ready-to-use SciVal tools to operate with A&H subcategories and calculate additional bibliometric characteristics, such as Citations per Publication (CPP), Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) and journal quartiles. Information on the country of journal publishers and details on delisted journals from Scopus were obtained from the official Source Title List available on the Elsevier website and the SCImago Journal and Country Rank Portal.

According to the results obtained, the publication patterns for Ukrainian A&H research exhibit dynamics comparable to those of other countries, with a gradual increase in the total number of papers and sources. However, the citedness is lower than expected, and the share of publications in top-quartile sources is lower for 2020–2021 period compared to the previous years. The impact of internationally collaborative papers, especially those in English, is higher. Nevertheless, over half of all works remain uncited, probably due to the limited readership of the journals selected for publication.

This study provides original insights into the bibliometric characteristics of Ukrainian A&H publications between 2012 and 2021, as assessed using the Scopus database. The authors’ findings reveal that Ukraine's A&H publications have higher visibility than some Asian countries with similar population sizes. However, in comparison to other countries of similar size, Ukraine's research output is smaller. The authors also discovered that cultural and historical similarities with neighboring countries play a more significant role in publication activity than population size. This study highlights the low integration of Ukrainian A&H research into the global academic community, evident through a decline in papers published in influential journals and poor citedness. These findings underscore the importance for authors to prioritize disseminating research in influential journals, rather than solely focusing on indexing in particular databases.

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.

This research paper aims to handle the effects of economic growth, corruption, energy consumption as well as trade openness on CO2 emissions for a sample of West African countries during the period 1980 and 2018.

The current work uses the pooled mean group (PMG)-autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) panel model to estimate the dynamics among the different variables used in the short and long terms.

The findings demonstrate that all variables have long-term effects. These results suggest that gross domestic product (GDP) per capita exhibits a positive and prominent effect on CO2 emissions. Corruption displays a negative and outstanding effect on long-term CO2 emissions. In contrast, energy consumption in West African countries and trade openness create environmental degradation. Contrarily to long-term results, short-term results demonstrate that economic growth, corruption and trade openness do not influence the environmental quality.

Empirical findings provide useful information to explore deeper and better the link between the used variables. They stand for a theoretical basis as well as an enlightening guideline for policymakers to set strategies founded on the analyzed links.

This paper focuses on the factors related to faculty workload in the context of resource scarcity to examine whether there is a relationship between them and grade inflation.

As for methodological novelty, the authors created an indicator of students' expectations about grades that is related to grade inflation and conducted regression analysis using cluster-robust error correction based on this indicator.

The results suggested that proper workload allocation among the faculty can mitigate grade inflation. Namely, such measures as control for concurrent courses, the length of courses and the labor intensity of the faculty are suggested for grade inflation prevention.

Academic literature posits that a steep increase in average grades might cause a long-term depreciation of the quality of higher education. This article is, therefore, focused on various factors connected with grade inflation in higher education. The authors highlighted problems associated with teaching evaluation imperfections, academic norm transformation and workload intensity.

This paper attempts to investigate the impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on the returns and volatility of the United States (US) natural gas futures market.

The study uses secondary data of 996 trading day provided by the US Department of Energy and investing.com websites and applies the event study methodology in addition to the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (GARCH) family models.

The findings from the exponential EGARCH (1,1) estimate are the best indication of a significant positive effects of the Ukraine–Russia war on the returns and volatility of the US natural gas futures prices. The cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) of the event study show that the natural gas futures prices reacted negatively but not significantly to the Russian–Ukraine war at the event date window [−1,1] and the [−15, −4] event window. CARs for the longer pre and post-event window display significant positive values and coincides with the standard finance theory for the case of the US natural gas futures over the Russia–Ukraine conflict.

This is the first study to examine the impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on natural gas futures prices in the United States. Thus, it provides indications on the behavior of investors in this market and proposes new empirical evidence that help in investment analyses and decisions.

This analysis examines the relationship between corruption and firm productivity in Vietnam.

The authors apply the system generalized method of moments estimation approach on a panel dataset constructed from comprehensive enterprise surveys covering all the sectors over the 2011–2020 period.

The results confirm a non-linear relationship between corruption and firm productivity. Where corruption is severe, leaving corruption alone tends to benefit firm productivity because efforts to control corruption are likely to cause greater delays. In less corrupt provinces, corruption appears to harm firm productivity while efforts to control corruption provide significant productivity gains. This U-shaped relationship is confirmed for small firms and those in the private sector sub-samples. Intriguingly, this study reveals that the U-shaped relationship does not apply to micro, medium, large firms, state-owned firms and foreign-invested firms because corruption is found to have no significant impact on productivity among these sub-samples. Changes in regulations after 2014 toward promoting a transparent business environment are shown to foster the positive impact of lowering corruption on firm productivity.

This study suggests that lowering corruption is beneficial for firm productivity at the micro level. However, where corruption is severe, monitoring corruption alone is likely to cause adverse effects on productivity due to increased bureaucratic delays. Institutional reforms might play an important role in leveraging the effects of lowering corruption on productivity in highly corrupt areas.

This paper sheds new light on the relationship between corruption and firm productivity in the broad existing literature and especially in the limited number of studies for Vietnam.

The European Commission has established the reference value of the social discount rate (SDR) to be used in the cost-benefit analysis according to the subdivision of the states relating to the beneficiaries of the Cohesion Fund. This criterion does not allow to adequately consider the economic, social and environmental conditions of each European states for ensuring an equitable and inclusive growth. The aimof the work is to provide an innovative methodology for assessing the “adjusted” SDR according to the socioeconomic and environmental conditions that differently affect the sustainable development of each European state.

Through the implementation of a methodological approach that consists of ordered and sequential phases and the synergic adoption of the Multi-Criteria Techniques with the Data Envelopment Analysis, a corrective coefficient of the SDR established by the European Commission is determined.

The results obtained for the 27 European states highlight how the different conditions of each of them could affect the correct choice of the SDR to be used in the Cost-Benefit Analysis.

The proposed research represents a useful reference for identifying national reference SDR values for each European state, consistent with its specificities and with the goals of inclusive growth of the countries and of social and territorial cohesion. Furthermore, the traceability of the methodology in its phases will allow to adapt the SDR to sudden events or exogenous shocks.

While extant literature explores the influence of institutions on the national innovation system (NIS), most research has either focused on specific institutional aspects or treated institutions as a unified entity. This study aims to examine the effect of various institutional factors on a country’s NIS.

The conceptual model was empirically validated using regression analysis. The study sample comprised a total of 84 countries.

This study identifies and empirically validates a comprehensive set of institutional factors. It also highlights the significant institutional factors (including political stability, government effectiveness, ease of resolving insolvency and the rule of law) that can help improve a country’s NIS.

The research provides practical implications for organizations and policymakers seeking to understand and foster an innovative culture within the NIS. Policymakers are encouraged to develop a nurturing environment within the NIS by focusing on significant institutional factors. Organizations are encouraged to closely monitor developments in the NIS of a country to make informed strategic decisions at the business, corporate and international levels.