Search results

This study aims to examine the hysteresis hypothesis in unemployment using monthly data from 13 countries in transition.

Stationarity in the unemployment rate of selected transition economies was analyzed using four different group unit root tests, namely, linear, structural breaks, non-linear and structural breaks and non-linear.

The empirical results show that the unemployment hysteresis hypothesis is valid for the majority of transition economies, including Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, the Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovenia. However, the results strongly reject the null hypothesis of unemployment hysteresis for the Kazakhstan and the Slovak Republics.

This study revealed that, for countries in transition, advanced unit root tests exhibit greater validity when compared to standard tests

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perception of marketing managers in a transition country Montenegro with regards to marketing metrics. The paper examines the degree in which managers are familiar with the way marketing metrics are applied and how important they are in the process of making business decisions in a company operating in a Montenegro.

Data was collected during 2020 through a survey of 171 randomly selected companies and was analyzed using structural equation model and the statistical method of analysis of variance tests.

The obtained results show that managers are quite familiar with financial and non-financial metrics. Both groups are applied to a significant degree, as managers believe that these indicators provide valuable information needed during the decision-making process. Still, more emphasis is placed on the knowledge, implementation and importance of non-financial metrics compared to financial metrics. This is probably due to the specificities of the economic activities of the companies operating in Montenegro, as most of them are service companies, which is why non-financial metrics (such as consumer metrics) are the most important indicators when it comes to ascertaining the market position of the company. Additionally, in recent years the primary focus in Montenegro, as country that is still in the process of transformation from planned economy to a free-market form, has been placed on strengthening of competitiveness and advancing the market orientation of companies. This led to an increase in the importance that managers in transition countries attach to non-financial metrics.

The fact that the survey only covers companies from one country is its limitation.

The obtained results will have a significant empirical contribution, which is reflected in providing guidelines for managers on how to improve the system of measuring and controlling marketing performance, all that to strengthen the competitiveness of the company, and can serve managers of hierarchy levels in a company as guidelines for making decisions on the implementation of marketing strategy and marketing metrics, to improve business performance, multi-context customer interaction, cost-saving and strengthen competitiveness.

Obtaining necessary knowledge management and implementing marketing metrics are important conditions for consideration when it comes to the continuous monitoring and improvement of business results, increasing competitiveness and advancing the market position of the company.

The originality stems from the analysis of the interconnection that exists between marketing metrics and strategic decision-making, which is expected to be positively reflected in the development of society, i.e. strengthening the competitiveness of companies based on knowledge management achieved through the assessment of the degree of knowledge, the implementation and the significance of each of the metrics covered within this research in business decision-making processes. The paper provides insights into the extent to which managers understand the meaning of these indicators and are able to combine different marketing metrics to obtain more complex indicators, serving as necessary inputs when making strategic business decisions.

This study aims to use a comparative analysis to examine the channel of deferring cash commitments, which can be seen as a strategic solution to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on Moldova's service sector.

This paper uses the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition analysis. The World Bank's post-COVID-19 survey is used. The methodology takes into account heterogeneity among firms.

The results of the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition analysis show that service firms use deferred cash commitments more than industrial firms, corporate governance and their pandemic-related strategies are also effective in the post-COVID Moldovan economy. The results are robust to different modeling alternatives.

COVID-19 can be considered a key source of uncertainty for firms, especially those operating in economies where financial frictions occasionally occur in a transition economy. Therefore, this study can shed new light on the impact of COVID-19 on financial strategies in a transition economy.

Digital innovation and circular business model innovation are two critical enablers of a circular economy. A wide variety of digital technologies such as blockchain, 3D printing, cyber-physical systems, or big data also diverges the applications of digital technologies in circular business models. Given heterogeneous attributes of circular business models and digital technologies, the selections of digital technologies and circular business models might be highly distinctive within and between sectorial contexts. This paper examines digital circular business models in the context of the fashion industry and its multiple actors. This industry as the world’s second polluting industry requires an urgent circular economy (CE) transition with less resource consumption, lower waste emissions and a more stable economy.

An inductive, exploratory multiple-case study method is employed to investigate the ten cases of different sized fashion companies (i.e. large, small medium-sized firm (SME) and startup firms). The comparison across cases is conducted to understand fashion firms' distinct behaviours in adopting various digital circular economy strategies.

The paper presents three archetypes of digital-based circular business models in the fashion industry: the blockchain-based supply chain model, the service-based model and the pull demand-driven model. Besides incremental innovations, the radical business model and digital innovations as presented in the pull demand-driven model may be crucial to the fashion circular economy transition. The pull demand–driven model may shift the economy from scales to scopes, change the whole process of how the fashion items are forecasted, produced, and used, and reform consumer behaviours. The paths of adopting digital fashion circular business models are also different among large, SMEs and startup fashion firms.

The study provides business managers with empirical insights on how circular business models (CBMs) should be chosen according to intrinsic business capacities, technological competences and CE strategies. The emerging trends of new fashion markets (e.g. rental, subscription) and consumers' sustainable awareness should be not be neglected. Moreover, besides adopting recycling and reuse strategies, large fashion incumbents consider collaborating with other technology suppliers and startup companies to incubate more radical innovations.

Appropriate policies and regulations should be enacted to enable the digital CE transition. Market patterns and consumer acceptances are considered highly challenging to these digital fashion models. A balanced policy on both the demand and supply sides are suggested. The one-side policy may fail CBMs that entail an upside-down collaboration of both producers and consumers. Moreover, it is perhaps time to rethink how to reduce unnecessary new demand rather than repeatedly producing and recycling.

The pace of CE research is lagging far behind the accelerating environmental contamination by the fashion industry. The study aims to narrow the gap between theory and practice to harmonise fashion firms' orchestration and accelerate the transition of the fashion industry towards the CE. This study examines diverse types of digital technologies in different circular business models in a homogeneous context of the fashion industry with heterogeneous firm types.

Our paper studies a central issue with a long history in economics: the relationship between population and economic growth. We analyze the joint dynamics of economic and demographic growth in 111 countries during the period 1960–2019.

Using the concept of economic regime, the paper introduces the notion of distance between the dynamical paths of different countries. Then, a minimal spanning tree (MST) and a hierarchical tree (HT) are constructed to detect groups of countries sharing similar dynamic performance.

The methodology confirms the existence of three country clubs, each of which exhibits a different dynamic behavior pattern. The analysis also shows that the clusters clearly differ with respect to the evolution of other fundamental variables not previously considered [gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, human capital and life expectancy, among others].

Our results indirectly suggest the existence of dynamic interdependence in the trajectories of economic growth and population change between countries. It also provides evidence against single-model approaches to explain the interdependence between demographic change and economic growth.

We introduce a methodology that allows for a model-free topological and hierarchical description of the interplay between economic growth and population.

The purpose of this study is to look at the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE's) progress toward economic diversification and becoming a knowledge-based economy.

The World Development Indicators (WDI) and GlobalEconomy websites provided all secondary data for this paper. The data are largely used to highlight the UAE's current level of diversification and, consequently, the atmosphere for a knowledge economy transition necessary for sustainable development. Additionally, the study conducts a nonparametric estimation using DEA to identify the condition of four variables pertaining to the UAE's knowledge economy. The Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) was utilized empirically in this study to determine the current state of diversity.

According to this research, the UAE economy was reasonably diverse until recently. The number of patents and journal papers published per resident both add to the UAE's GDP. Furthermore, the UAE's information and communication technology (ICT) exports are inconsistent; a declining trend in the number of researchers and the education sector's continuous struggles are major concerns. Furthermore, Figure 1 in the introduction reinforces this conclusion by noting that construction and building remained the greatest employer of labor throughout the time period. This is a significant finding because, as illustrated in this research, low labor force participation in the education sector, combined with lower citizen participation in advanced education in the UAE, results in low scientific research and publications, with low knowledge output as patent applications. In general, the majority of the UAE's population is expat, and the extent to which locals and expats contribute to the overall advancement of education remains an open question. According to the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, three variables in the knowledge economy are productive, and they are economic incentive and institutional regime, innovation systems and ICT. The findings of this article will aid policymakers in the UAE, and more generally in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, in developing more successful policies that help in the growth of a knowledge- and innovation-based economy.

This study is appropriate for UAE economic policymakers to monitor the state and policies required for the UAE's transition to a knowledge economy.

This issue has rarely been addressed by the use of robust parametric and nonparametric processes, as well as robust data visualization tools.

Mobilizing a theoretical framework combining institutional logics and “imprinting” lenses, this paper provides an in-depth contextualized analysis of how historical imprints affect social and environmental reporting (SER) practices in Romania, a post-communist country in Eastern Europe.

The authors conduct a qualitative field study with a diverse dataset including regulations, publicly available reports and interviews with multiple actors involved in the SER field in Romania. The authors follow a reflexive approach in constructing the narratives by mobilizing their personal experience and understanding of the field to analyze the rich empirical material.

The authors identify a blend of logics that combine local and Western conceptualizations of business responsibilities and explain how the transition from a communist ideology to the free market economy affected SER practices in Romania. The authors also highlight four major imprints and document their longitudinal development, evidencing three main patterns: persistence, transformation and decay. The authors find that the deep connections that form between logics and imprints explain the cohabitation of logics rather than their straight replacement.

The paper contributes by evidencing the role of imprints' dynamics in the institutionalization of SER logics. The authors claim that the persistence (decay) of imprints from a former regime such as communism hinders (facilitates) the institutionalization of Western SER logics. Transformation instead has more uncertain effects. The pattern that an imprint takes hinges upon its usefulness for business interests.

The sustainable transition towards the circular economy requires the effective use of artificial intelligence (AI) and information technology (IT) techniques. As the sustainability targets for 2030–2050 increasingly become a tougher challenge, society, company managers and policymakers require more support from AI and IT in general. How can the AI-based and IT-based smart decision-support tools help implementation of circular economy principles from micro to macro scales?

This chapter provides a conceptual framework about the current status and future development of smart decision-support tools for facilitating the circular transition of smart industry, focussing on the implementation of the industrial symbiosis (IS) practice. IS, which is aimed at replacing production inputs of one company with wastes generated by a different company, is considered as a promising strategy towards closing the material, energy and waste loops. Based on the principles of a circular economy, the utility of such practices to close resource loops is analyzed from a functional and operational perspective. For each life cycle phase of IS businesses – e.g., opportunity identification for symbiotic business, assessment of the symbiotic business and sustainable operations of the business – the role played by decision-support tools is described and embedding smartness in these tools is discussed.

Based on the review of available tools and theoretical contributions in the field of IS, the characteristics, functionalities and utilities of smart decision-support tools are discussed within a circular economy transition framework. Tools based on recommender algorithms, machine learning techniques, multi-agent systems and life cycle analysis are critically assessed. Potential improvements are suggested for the resilience and sustainability of a smart circular transition.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the twin transition in China in the organization of innovation processes in artificial intelligence (AI) and green technology (GT) development and to understand the role of foreign multinationals in Chinese innovation systems.

A qualitative research approach is used by interviewing executives from German multinationals with expertise in AI and GT development and organization of innovation processes in China. In total, 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with companies, and the data were analysed with a thematic qualitative text analysis.

The findings show that AI applications for GT are primarily developed in cross-company projects that are led by local and regional authorities through the organization of industrial districts and clusters. German multinationals are either being integrated, remaining autonomous or being excluded from these twin transition innovation processes.

This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature by providing one of the first qualitative approach towards twin transition innovation processes in China and exploring the integration of multinational enterprises in cluster organizations. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the first twin transition studies from this perspective in emerging economies.

As the crystallization of Chinese wisdom and the shared wealth of all humanity, the Socialist Political Economy with Chinese Characteristics (SPECC) not only reveals the specific traits of SPECC but also indicates the general rules of the global economic development, showing both nationality and internationality. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Being aware of the nationality of the SPECC is of great importance. It requires to integrate the basic Marxist principles with the realities of China, and meanwhile draw lessons from, not just simply copy, the strengths of other countries. The authors must adhere to the basic principles of the SPECC.

From the perspective of past practices, the SPECC has not only provided theoretical guidance for China’s reform and development, but has also given references to some countries, especially developing countries under reform and transition.

SPECC should be based on China’s conditions and practices, absorb China’s traditional cultural essences, draw lessons from other nations’ positive theoretical and practical results, propose theoretical viewpoints independently and initially, and construct a distinct academic system and discourse system. In this way, China would work to develop the characteristics and advantages of the SPECC, and contribute Chinese wisdom to the development and improvement of world economics and economics theories.