This article studies the connectedness between economic sectors of the Polish stock market. The sectors that are considered are the following: banks, basic materials, chemicals, construction, developers, energy, food, and oil and gas. The analysis of the connectedness among sectors is conducted from a statistical and dynamic perspective. Using the time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) method, the intensity, direction and variation of volatility spillover between the economic sectors are studied. Two samples are analysed, the first one being from 1 January 2013 to 12 December 2019, which corresponds to the period before the pandemic caused by COVID-19, and the second one being from 1 January 2020 to 2 December 2021, which corresponds to the period during the pandemic. A series of results are obtained. First, the connectedness between the economic sectors varies depends on the time. Second, the connectedness between the sectors was stronger during the crisis caused by the outbreak of COVID-19 rather than before the crisis. The volatility of each sector was also primarily due to their own volatility. Thirdly, the banking sector was the main sector with respect to volatility spillover. The results that are obtained are important for making the right decisions regarding financial stability under crisis circumstances, when considering development strategies for some economic sectors but also in portfolio management for performing diversification and risk-mitigation strategies.

On the background of the exponential growth of the world’s population, doubled by the decrease of natural resources and the continuous, accentuated degradation of the quality of the environment, with global warming as its main effect, ensuring the sustainability of economic and social processes is becoming a growing concern. At the European Union level, it is important that all member countries adhere to and implement common measures on sustainable development, which involve, inter alia, ensuring the convergence of policies and their effects at EU level. The EU through detailed SDGs presents the structure of a system of indicators structured on 17 objectives, indicators taken over, implemented, and calculated by EUROSTAT. The study proposes, based on a Composite Index of Sustainable Development of EU Countries’ Economies (ISDE-EU), the analysis of the convergence of the sustainability of EU states’ economies, not so much at individual level, but at cluster level, each cluster containing EU countries with similar/close ISDE-EU levels and dynamics. The results of the analysis confirm the partial existence of the beta and sigma convergence of the sustainability of EU countries’ economies. Please note that, at the time when we processed data, the UK was an EU state, which is why it was included in the analysis.

This paper is based on an analysis of the content of management reports (annual, integrated), on the activity of European multinational companies (listed on the Stock Exchange). For this purpose, we conducted a content analysis of company management letters which open integrated and annual reports of European multinational listed companies. The data comprised a corpus of letters and statements of chairmen and/or executive directors in five environmentally sensitive industries that were analysed using Wmatrix4 software. The identified key words, the preferred semantic domains and the tone of emotional register from the letters of managers provide significant evidence on what kind of information they contain and how these managers want to share it with their stakeholders. Our results show that managers are interested in the optimistic presentation of the mission, results and future plans of their companies. We found that words such as like, confidence, proud or trust are common on the emotional map of these letters, but the preferences in use are unequally distributed among the five analysed sectors. We also report that the word “sustainability” is among the key terms found in letters and statements of managers. Finally, for each of the five corpuses, our study proved that, beyond common issues, different economic domains prefer different topics, using a significantly different lexical register both in terms of relative frequency of common key-words and diversity of words within the same semantic domain. The study systematizes a set of key-words and semantic domains used to convey positive emotions, avoiding those with negative connotations, in order to provide an image of a company that acts in a sustainable manner. This could be successfully used by corporate communicators of a wide range of companies who want to comply with the best practices of integrated reporting.

The present study analyses the relationship between economic growth and tourism growth at the level of Central and East European countries, using the spillover indices approach. Based on the monthly data obtained for the period 2000–2019, the analysis of this paper presents certain empirical results. Firstly, the relationship economic growth-international tourism grow is not stable over time, both from the point of view of its size and its direction, which suggests that the specific activities of international tourism contribute to the economic growth and hypotheses according to which international tourism growth causes economic growth are time-dependent. Secondly, the relationship economic growth-international tourism growth is dependent on certain major events, such as the economic and financial crisis that started in 2008 and the debt crises from 2010. The results obtained show that the impact of these events influences the direction of the relationship between international tourism and economic growth which becomes more accentuated during the economic growth periods.

The CEE stock markets are more and more integrated in the European financial markets. The growth of the integration of financial markets favours the volatility and return spillover between them. The current study analyses the volatility spillover among the stock markets in the countries from Central and East Europe (CEE) and Germany and France with the aim to identify the possibilities of reduction of a portfolio risk. A special attention is granted to the analysis during the pandemic caused by COVID-19. The time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model on which is based the methodology proposed by Antonakakis and Gabauer (2017) is used to estimate the evolution in time of volatility spillover. The empirical results obtained for the period January 2001 – September 2021 highlight the increase in volatility spillover between the countries analysed when the pandemic caused by COVID-19 was confirmed. The lack of volatility integration of the markets analysed enables the making of arbitrages in order to reduce the risk of a portfolio. The results obtained are important in the management of financial asset portfolios.