Changes in recent years have resulted in an increase in the ways in which renewable energy is used and shared in total electricity generation. Each type of renewable energy is characterised by its uniqueness of the physical specificity and, therefore, differences in technological solutions. In this study, one of the methods of multidimensional comparative analysis (WAP)—Hellwig’s taxonomic measure of development—was used to assess the level of development of electricity production from renewable sources. Twenty-eight countries were surveyed, including 27 countries of the current European Union and the United Kingdom. Panel models were used to describe the relationship between the share of electricity production from RES in total electricity production and GDP per capita, public spending by countries on energy as a percentage of GDP as well as electricity production from water, wind, solar, and biogas per capita. The presented synthetic measures confirmed the more favourable situation of the rich northern EU countries in the production of electricity from renewable sources (solar, wind, hydro, and bio), at the same time highlighting problems with the greening of electricity production in a large group of the new EU member states. The panel study confirmed the importance of differences in economic potential and wealth between EU countries for the development of the use of RES for electricity production.

Motivation: Online shopping has gained increased economic importance as a result of restrictions on brick-and-mortar purchases due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Notwithstanding the natural partial return of consumers to direct purchases with the lifting of restrictions by the authorities, interest in online shopping does not return to pre-pandemic levels. Aim: The aim of the article is to verify the influence of various factors on the propensity to use online shopping in the European Union countries in the period 2010–2021. Due to the temporal and geographical scope of data, the panel method was used in the research. Results: The research on the determinants of online shopping, carried out by the authors, showed the statistical significance of all eight dependent variables affecting the share of people who shop online in the societies of the European Union countries. The increase in the use of online shopping is influenced by both the quality of Internet connections, the general frequency of Internet use, readiness to search the Internet for information about goods and services and the use of Internet banking. This regularity also occurs in the case of the share of older people in society, the share of people with at least the second level of education, the share of people employed in science and technology, and the level of GDP per capita.

The problem of the exclusion of some households, in particular those less affluent, from the use of financial services available on the market, including savings, is an important issue in the literature due to the objectively identified negative social and economic consequences of such exclusion. The research objective of the article is to attempt to identify factors related to savings exclusion which determine the share of gross savings in GDP in the new European Union member states. To achieve the goal, a panel data model was estimated. The set of statistically significant factors that adversely affect the creation of gross savings in the economy, and thus the higher level of savings exclusion, include the unemployment rate, social contributions, household debt, the Gini coefficient, and the share of people aged 25-49 in the total population. All these variables are negatively correlated with the explained variable, which means that an increase in their value causes a fall in gross savings. The results of the research have shown that such a highly aggregated measure as gross savings in the economy can be useful for analysing selected aspects of savings exclusion occurring in the examined new member states of the EU.

Corporate Social Responsibility indices for shares listed on the Warsaw and Moscow stock exchanges: design limitations of information value for socially responsible investors

With a vast customer base and the acquisition of information about their customers and their preferences in connection with their services, Big Tech companies are also becoming essential players in the financial sphere. Payment solutions offered by Big Tech companies, such as Google Pay or Alipay, familiarise consumers with the presence of such companies in the monetary sphere. The issuance of private money has the most excellent chance in a form regulated by public authorities and with a value stabilized to the national currency, regardless of whether it would be similar to narrow banking, synthetic CBDC or another, related form. This would provide the best ratio of benefits to economic and social costs generated by the emergence of such private money. The article aims to define the relationship between the characteristics of prospective Big Tech money individual users from France and Germany and their support for Big Tech’s right to issue their digital money. The study used data from an empirical survey designed by the author. The study used the logit model to assess the impact of selected determinants on the respondents’ willingness to accept Big Tech’s right to issue money. For this research, a stepwise regression was used to estimate the parameters of the logit model. The results revealed much greater flexibility in the approach to money on the part of French consumers than German consumers due to a significantly larger number of statistically significant explanatory variables and their differentiation in the studied groups of these variables. Differences in monetary preferences of societies of countries using a single currency should be taken into account both by companies seeking to launch the issuance of private stablecoins in the eurozone as well as by the European Central Bank intending to introduce the digital euro and by other regulators of the eurozone financial market.

Theoretical background: Attempts to offer the users of state money its new digital form with characteristics partially similar to cash and cryptocurrencies led to the creation of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) concept. In October 2020, the European Central Bank (ECB) published a report on the conditions for building the concept of the digital euro. On January 12, 2021, the ECB completed collecting the opinions of potential users (understood as natural persons) and representatives of companies, institutions, and experts on their expectations for the future digital euro. However, the survey only asked a few questions about the preferred features of the digital euro. The questionnaire form was only available on the website of the ECB, which made the respondents a specific group as only those who were interested in visiting the website replied. Representatives of companies, institutions, and experts also provided answers from the user’s point of view. The questions did not take into account the characteristics of the respondents ensuring the representativeness of the research sample. Purpose of the article: The article aims to define the relationship between the characteristics of consumers (individual users of money as a product of the central bank) from France and Germany and their acceptance of using the digital euro. Research methods: The analysis used data from a survey conducted using the CAWI method. The study was conducted in August 2021 on a group of adult internet users representative in terms of gender, age, and place of residence, including 638 German and 646 French respondents (full responses). Main findings: The results show that in both countries the consumers most willing to accept the digital euro are men rather than women, consumers already taking advantage of the opportunities offered by mobile banking, and consumers who believe that the money entrusted to banks is not safe. However, the differences observed in the example of only these two countries support the conclusion of other researchers about the need to conduct this type of research either in the entire eurozone or in selected eurozone countries with specific payment habits.