Developing people’s interest towards starting a business plays a vital role in the former socialist countries in which, for a very long time, private property and free initiative were almost completely annihilated. Therefore, countries like Romania cannot design a sustainable growth model without taking into account the necessary improvements in the human capital factor, through the entrepreneurial education specific to the market economy, and in the social capital, which leads to stability and enhances the economic activity. The main objectives of this paper are to analyze how much the entrepreneurial intentions are influenced by certain psycho-behavioral traits of the individual (creativity, locus of control, need for achievement and risk taking propensity) and to evaluate the influence of different types of education on these intentions, in order to see if the entrepreneurial education significantly influences the entrepreneurial intentions of Romanian young people. By analyzing the specialized literature, we have developed six research hypothesis that were tested on a sample of 600 students from the undergraduate (bachelor) and master programs within the large state universities of Romania who have entrepreneurship courses in the content of their curricula, with the help of a questionnaire-based survey. Depending on the research hypothesis, several data analysis approaches were used, including Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and General Linear Models (GLM). The main results of this study clearly illustrate that the need for achievement and the propensity towards taking risks play an important role in determining the entrepreneurial intention. Furthermore, graduates of the high schools with an entrepreneurial field are less inclined to engage in businesses compared to the graduates of the high schools that offer general education.

Carbon dioxide emissions are on the rise, posing a serious global issue. Therefore, it is important that policymakers identify the exact causes of these emissions. This paper investigates the influence of financial development, primary energy consumption, and economic growth on CO₂ emissions in 11 post-transition European economies. The assessment was made for the 1995–2017 period using panel cointegration and causality analyses. The causality analyses did not reveal significant connection between financial sector development and CO₂ emissions, but rather a two-way causality between primary energy consumption and economic growth, on one hand, and CO₂ emissions on the other. Meanwhile, long-run analysis disclosed that financial sector development and primary energy consumption positively affected CO₂ emissions. Our results seek to grab the attention of policy makers, who could work towards creating country-specific strategies that balance the relationship between financial development and CO₂ emissions. These long-term policies could ensure both development of the financial sector and environmental protection.

The purpose of our study is to identify the nature of the link between government spending and economic growth, in order to test the two theories of Wagner and Keynes, in the case of Romania. On the one hand, Keynes argues that public spending is an important tool to stimulate growth. On the other hand, Wagner says that increased public spending is a result of economic growth. We analyzed the long-term dynamics of the two time series through Johansen’s cointegration approach and, in the short term, with the help of Granger’s causality test. The obtained results do not indicate the existence of long-term cointegration vectors, but they support the double causality relation in the short term. Therefore, not only does GDP represent a Granger cause for government spending but also vice versa. Our results validate the liberal criticism of the state’s involvement in supporting economies. As the critics of the monetarist school said, the effect of multiplying government spending on national income is short-term. The long-term effect appears under the action of inflationary macroeconomic bottlenecks.

The purposes of the paper are to explain the evolution of the low-cost airlines in Europe, considering the factors that have encouraged their spatial and temporal spread, and to identify the types of the low-cost business models they have generated. This exploratory research was conducted using two methods. An analysis of the secondary data offered by the specialized literature was followed by primary data collection through a structured interview with Ryanair representatives. The findings of the study conducted on Ryanair were sent to the company, fact that allowed us to include, in the conclusions‘part, some recommendations for the airline

For more than a quarter of a century, China has experienced a significant economic growth. Yet, this rapid growth has brought on many economic, social and environmental challenges, which might negatively influence the future development of the country. The objective of this paper is to analyse the Chinese economic evolution in order to determine if its growth model is sustainable over time. The research methods consisted in an investigation of the specialized literature, which helped us formulate four research hypotheses, and in a statistical analysis of secondary data, which allowed us develop four models, in order to test the hypotheses. The conclusions show that, to sustain the growth rate, China needs to increase its human capital stock, to keep the pace of attracting the foreign investments, to reduce the size of the government, to diminish the public consumption and to invest in the renewable energy, for increasing the energy efficiency.

Economic security is considered one of the primary aspects of well-being and it is usually closely associated with poverty. This article intends to explore the main determinants of economic (in)security in European Union countries and to investigate the relationship between the level of economic insecurity and the degree of economic freedom. In order to achieve our goal, we used Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to stipulate a composite and standardized index of economic insecurity in the European Union and, afterwards, we utilized panel data regressions to analyze its correlation with the variables of the Index of Economic Freedom.