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.

This article aims to analyze the impact of the energy sector on the economic security of European households over the period 2010–2023, addressing an important gap in the literature since there is no EU cross-country evidence linking energy dependence on non-EU countries to a multidimensional measure of household economic insecurity over a long-time span. To achieve our goal, the dependent variable considered was an aggregate index of economic insecurity developed in previous research and constructed based on three fundamental dimensions: basic needs of the household, household fragility, and the burden of unemployment. Subsequently, panel data regression analysis with fixed effects was performed (considering 23 EU countries and the time period 2010–2023). The results highlight how more energy dependency on third countries could lead to more economic insecurity for European households. The robustness tests confirmed the initial results and underlined structural differences between countries. The research demonstrates how the energy dependence of EU states on countries outside the EU could have serious repercussions on the long-term economic security of Europeans, but, at the same time, this can be counterbalanced by a possible shift towards domestic renewable energy sources. Based on these results, both our hypotheses were confirmed.

The aim of the article is to examine structural differences in household saving behaviour across European countries, arguing that European integration has not led to convergence in saving patterns. Using data from 27 EU Member States (1996–2023), it compares the EU-15 with post-2004 members through Lasso variable selection and fixed-effects panel models. By combining machine learning-based variable selection with panel regression, the study offers a novel analytical perspective on the determinants of household savings. The findings reveal significant structural differences between the two groups: taxation and monetary freedom show stronger associations with household saving in post-2004 member states, whereas education-related factors are more prominent in the EU15. These results suggest that policies should strengthen precautionary saving mechanisms and promote financial education to encourage household saving.

This paper presents the nexus between Knowledge Management theory with New Institutional Economics concepts. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence is forcing managers to rethink the way knowledge is created, processed, and leveraged within the decision-making practices. The literature addresses on 2 different analytical plans the binomial Artificial Intelligence - organizations and the relationship between inclusive institutions, economic freedom, and Artificial Intelligence technologies. Starting from this disjunction, the paper’s scope is to achieve a blend between the two perspectives - micro and macro- through an empirical analysis of how economic freedom influences the adoption of Artificial Intelligence technologies within enterpises, with implications for the managerial decision-making mechanism. Using panel regression equations involving 32 countries and the period 2021-2025, we observed significant correlations between the degree of adoption of Artificial Intelligence technologies (segmented into size class enterprises) and five variables from the Economic Freedom Index (property rights, monetary freedom, trade freedom, tax burden, and judicial effectiveness). The models demonstrated the macroeconomic effects on decisions to adopt Artificial Intelligence technologies, which subsequently has implications in the decision making field. Furthermore, the Hausman test confirmed the appropriateness of fixed effects for all the models implied. Robustness tests also confirmed the models, highlighting a structural difference between the EU15 countries, nations that joined the EU after 2004 and non-EU countries. The study contributes by addressing a topic relevant to contemporary reality and presents an empirical analyses linking economic freedom to the adoption of artificial intelligence, with implications on the dynamics of managerial decision-making.

The main premise from which we start in the construction of this article is that, in the contemporary era, the need for digitalization and facilitating access to public services has become an imperative in the vast majority of liberal-democratic states. Digitalization is an inevitable process in the natural course of the contemporary age, considering that its benefits have been more than tangible in the vast majority of cases, and e-Government is precisely a concretization of the benefits of digitalization. However, the development of e-Government is not a simple process, as it requires the presence of several factors, which this article will present, analysing their relevance. Moreover, in this article we will also note the main structural differences at European level in the implementation of e-Government: which countries have reached an advanced level of e-Government development, which countries have serious problems in developing e-Government and, above all, why these differences exist.