Digitalization has become more and more important for economic activities and economic development. E-commerce, as a part of local and international trade, is of increasing importance and is highly correlated with technological progress and innovation. Our research investigates the relevance of selected drivers that could explain the latest e-commerce adoption at global level. In our analysis, we used the UNCTAD B2C E-commerce Index (2014–2020, yearly data, covering 133 countries, 931 observations) which can be considered relevant to express an economy’s readiness to support e-commerce. E-commerce adoption is assessed in our research by the following six factors: (i) wealth, economic freedom, and economic development; (ii) access and sophistication of the financial sector; (iii) education; (iv) regulations; (v) development of ICT infrastructure; and (vi) frontier drivers (such as AI, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain technologies). In our research, we used a panel data analysis framework using hard data provided by different databases (UNCTAD, World Bank, etc.). The results we obtained confirmed that developed countries with a higher income level are higher adopters of e-commerce, financial development and the accessibility of financial services significantly help e-commerce adoption, a regulatory system (particularly economic freedom and property rights) strongly supports e-commerce adoption, education has a positive impact on e-commerce adoption, ICT infrastructure increases the adoption of e-commerce and the readiness and use of AI, and frontier technologies generate an increased adoption of e-commerce. The results we obtained are consistent with the findings of similar studies (most of them using different research methodologies) and opens the ground for interesting discussions and further research developments. The novelty of our research consists in the exhaustive perspective on e-commerce adoption drivers (including frontier technologies such as AI or blockchain) based on hard country data collected from various sources for a consistent panel of countries and a relevant number of years, providing an alternative approach to the mainstream studies on e-commerce adoption that process data from surveys, interviews, or focus groups.

This paper aims to explore the discrepancies in attracting European Union funding across member states and across different sectors of activity. Specifically, it aims to discover if there is a set of rule or model that can be attributed to the structure of European Union funding across nations and sectors to discern if some sectors are much more lucrative from the point of attracting European Union funding than others. In addition, beyond the purely economic and business considerations, the article wants to investigate if some ideologies, regimes, or parties are more successful in general in attracting European Union funding by sharing membership between European international parties or other reasons such as funding majoritarian populist parties to sustain European Union membership. The topic is of recent international economics significance in the context of Brexit and the buildup of Eurosceptic sentiments across the European Union as well as the international polarization between blocks of political power in the global trade war. This topic has been addressed partially before, mostly by journalists but represents a niche novelty in academic studies of International Relations. The methodology used will be both through argumentation of historical and current evidence as well as empiric data collection.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the ability in assessing successful investment when done by actors outside of the business arena such as government bodies or international economic cooperation agencies. More specifically, the paper aims to analyze how non-reimbursable European funding for enterprises can affect the financial results, comparing companies that have received funding through the Start-up Nation project with companies that have not received it. In order to determine if companies receiving aid or not receiving aid can be argued to be performing better economically, I have studied data from the Start-up Nation Romania project, which provide the possibility of a concrete comparison by identifying the companies participating in the project, and analyzing which group performed better.