• Energy Research

The economic crisis of 2008 strongly affected European countries, many of them slipping into a recession whose depth and manifestation differed substantially from country to country and from region to region. In this context, economists revived the concept of economic resilience of states and regions and focused on identifying and explaining its determinants. The literature investigates ways to enhance economic resilience through appropriate public policies, but the studies conducted so far have several limitations. In order to contribute to this goal, this article analyzes the economic resilience of the regions of seven Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) and its main determinant factors. The results show that, in terms of resistance, Bulgaria, Slovenia and their regions behaved best, while Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia (including regions) had a negative evolution. In terms of recovery Bulgaria (and 4 regions out of 6), Romania (5 out of 8 regions) and Slovakia (4 of 4 regions) performed better than the other Eastern countries. The determining factors of resilience for the studied regions concern the size of the manufacturing sector, the services and public administration, entrepreneurship and the human capital represented by tertiary education; agriculture and urban population have no significant influence on regional resilience. We adopt an econometric approach in this study, using the quantile regression for the analysis. Based on these empirical evidences, appropriate proposals have been formulated, useful to both field theorists and practitioners in public policy.

The recent financial crisis highlighted the need for a strong emphasis on the effectiveness of board risk oversight practices. Good corporate governance upholds effective risk management, which in turn ensures the flexibility to reply to unpredicted threats and take benefit of opportunities. Thus, risk management affords corporate resilience that engenders competitive advantage due to the capacity to circumvent, deter, defend, react, and adjust to any kind of disturbance, besides recovering quickly. Guaranteeing that the board is prepared and adequately resilient to deal with a crisis circumstance is a crucial part of good governance. By employing a data set of companies listed in Romania, this paper analyzes whether boards of directors influence risk management. We measure boards by means of size, independence, diversity, establishment of Consultative Committees, as well as CEO duality, gender, age, and tenure. Based on ten financial ratios, we develop two risk indicators regarding shareholders’ wealth and short-term risk, alongside a global business failure risk tool, by means of principal component analysis. Furthermore, the output of the multivariate regression analysis show that CEO gender, the size of the board, and Audit Committee negatively influence business failure risk.

This paper examines the nexus between the main forms of transport, related investments, specific air pollutants, and sustainable economic growth. The research is important since transport may act as a facilitator of social, economic, and environmental development. Based on data retrieved from Eurostat, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and World Bank, the output of fixed-effects regressions for EU-28 countries over 1990–2016 reveals that road, inland waterways, maritime, and air transport infrastructure positively influence gross domestic product per capita (GDPC), though a negative link occurred in the case of railway transport. As concerning investments in transport infrastructure, the empirical results exhibit a positive impact on economic growth for every type of transport, except inland waterways. Besides, emissions of CO2 from all kind of transport, alongside other specific air pollutants, negatively influence GDPC. The fully modified and dynamic ordinary least squares panel estimation results reinforce the findings. Further, in the short-run, Granger causality based on panel vector error correction model pointed out a unidirectional causal link running from sustainable economic growth to inland waterways and maritime transport of goods, albeit a one-way causal link running from the volume of goods transported by air to GDPC. As well, the empirical results provide support one-way short-run links running from GDPC to investments in road and inland waterway transport infrastructure. In addition, a bidirectional short-run link occurred between carbon dioxide emissions from railway transport and GDPC, whereas unidirectional relations with economic growth were identified in the case of carbon dioxide emissions from road and domestic aviation. In the long-run, a bidirectional causal relation was noticed between the length of the railways lines, investments in railway transport infrastructure, and GDPC, as well as a two-way causal link between the gross weight of seaborne goods handled in ports and GDPC.

This study aims at empirically investigating the drivers of sustainable economic growth in EU-28 countries. By means of panel data regression models, in the form of fixed and random effects models, alongside system generalized method of moments, we examine several drivers of real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate, as follows: higher education, business environment, infrastructure, technology, communications, and media, population lifestyle, and demographic changes. As regards higher education, the empirical results show that expenditure per student in higher education and traditional 18–22 year-old students are positively linked with sustainable economic growth, whereas science and technology graduates negatively influence real GDP growth. In terms of business environment, total expenditure on research and development and employment rates of recent graduates contributes to sustainable development, but corruption perceptions index revealed a negative association with economic growth. As well, the results provide support for a negative influence of infrastructure abreast technological measures on economic growth. Besides, we found a negative connection between old-age dependency ratio and sustainable economic growth.

Energy is crucial to economic progress, but the contemporary worldwide population increase that demands greater energy generated from conventional exhaustible resources, an energy price upsurge, and environmental concerns, imperils sustainable economic growth. Nevertheless, switching to renewable energy produced from naturally replenished resources promotes energy security, likewise addressing issues such as global warming and climate change. This paper aims at exploring the influence and causal relation between renewable energy, both overall and by type, and sustainable economic growth of European Union (EU)-28 countries for the period of 2003–2014. We notice that the mean share of renewable energy in the gross final energy consumption is 15%, while the mean share of renewable energy in transport fuel consumption is 3%, which are below the thresholds of 20% and 10%, respectively, as set by the EU Directive 2009/28/EC. By estimating panel data fixed-effects regression models, the results provide support for a positive influence of renewable energy overall, as well as by type, namely biomass, hydropower, geothermal energy, wind power, and solar energy on gross domestic product per capita. However, biomass energy shows the highest influence on economic growth among the rest of renewable energy types. In fact, a 1% increase of the primary production of solid biofuels increases GDP per capita by 0.16%. Besides, cointegrating regressions set on panel fully modified and dynamic ordinary least squares regressions confirm the positive influence related to the primary production of renewable energies on economic growth. A 1% increase in primary production of renewable energies increases GDP per capita by 0.05%–0.06%. However, the results of Granger causality based on panel vector error correction model indicate both in short-run and long-run a unidirectional causal relationship running from sustainable economic growth to the primary production of renewable energies, being supported the conservation hypothesis.