There are still debates in the scientific literature about the factors influencing countries’ sustainable socioeconomic development. Therefore, the current article aims at determining the factors of sustainable socioeconomic development and assessing its level in the EU countries. The following methods were employed for the research: an evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). EDAS was used to reveal which countries have the highest level of sustainable socioeconomic development, and which have the lowest. The ranking was done based on the appraisal score, which is an outcome of EDAS. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) was used for clustering the countries based on the appraisal scores in order to distinguish groups of countries having a similar level of sustainable socioeconomic development. The results revealed that the highest level of sustainable socioeconomic development is in Germany, and the lowest in Portugal. Based on HCA, the countries were divided into three groups. The first cluster’s countries have the weakest sustainable socioeconomic development, and countries assigned to the third cluster have the best. In the current research, the third cluster consists of one country, Germany, which supports the results obtained with the EDAS method, i.e., Germany is the country with the highest level of sustainable socioeconomic development in the EU.

The investigation of trust in commercial banks needs to focus specifically on internet banking, as it is the fastest growing banking service. The article explores factors influencing trust in internet banking and estimates this impact in the Baltics states. The factors are as follows: Provided information, e-banking system, the website of a bank, and a bank’s characteristics. Overall, 1013 respondents and 21 experts took part in the current study. The results of the respondents’ survey showed that the factor that is necessary for trust building in all the examined countries differs: In Lithuania, information and the bank, in Latvia, the website, and in Estonia, the bank. According to the experts, the most powerful factor in the trust-building process in Lithuania and Latvia is the e-banking system while in Estonia, the website. The research has the following limitations: The online survey of individual customers (however, internet banking relates to internet users, so this limitation is not essential); the analysis of only the positively affecting criteria of the trust-building process; only experts assessed the subfactors.

This paper aims to identify the main risk groups according to their significance on imports of agricultural products. After analysis of the scientific literature, eight groups of risks associated with agricultural products import were determined: supply risks, demand risks, production risks, management plus operational risks, logistical plus infrastructural risks, political risks, policy plus regulatory risks and financial risks. In order to assess the importance of all import risk groups, three Multicriteria decision support methods (MCDM)—SAW, TOPSIS and Geometric means—for expert evaluation are used. The article introduces a new import risks assessment framework CIRA (Country’s Imports Risk Assessment) contributing to the systematic approach of a country’s international trade risks management. The results order risk groups according to their importance in the following order: production (the most crucial risk group), logistical plus infrastructural, financial, management plus operational, political, supply, policy plus regulatory and demand risks.

Political unrest inevitably has consequences for a national economy. International trade in a globalised world has great importance for countries. Unfortunately, due to various political events, countries apply some restrictions to each other. In 2014, Western countries imposed sanctions on trade with Russia, due to the annexation of Crimea. As a response, Russia announced an embargo on importing of some goods from European and North American countries, as well as Australia. The current study investigates the economic impact on EU countries due to the mentioned embargo. The EU countries were grouped according to the average for 1998–2018 exports of products to Russia using a cluster analysis. After the clustering, the gravity model was employed to develop the equations representing the international trade between each cluster and Russia. Although Russia declared an embargo on countries associated with the same group of goods, the economic impact on their economies was different. This study has a couple of limitations. The research reflects only the impact of the embargo on exports regardless of some possible indirect effects; the study assesses the export of all sectors due to limited data; and because the restrictions are applied only to the food sector, the research shows only relative changes in exports.

Nobody disputes that trust is an important issue in choosing a financial service provider, especially in the area of new forms of banking. The goal of this paper is to assess the most important determinants of trust in traditional banking. The study was conducted in the baltics and personal customers had to rank the distinguished factors. Using correlation analysis and binary logistic regression model it was found that the most significant factor influencing trust in all countries is provided information by the bank. In addition, in lithuania – bank’s characteristics, in latvia – customers’ risk perception and bank’s characteristics, in estonia – respondents’ experience of cooperation with a bank were highlighted as significant. The following measures of fit are used in order to describe the created logistic models: contingency table test, nagelkerke pseudo-r2, pearson chisquare test, wald test. However, there is a limitation – the survey was conducted online. Nevertheless, as internet penetration rate is high enough in investigated countries (from 76 percent in latvia to 91 percent in estonia), survey results can be adapted for at least seventy-five percent of each country’s population. The findings have implications on the development of the strategy and the policy of commercial banks.

This article analyses wine as an alternative investment tool and its relevance for investment portfolio diversification. Advantages and disadvantages of alternatives, benefits and weakness and peculiarities of investing in wine are systemised. In addition, the article looks at statistical data analysis of fine wine market and compares wine with other investment tools. The examination is based on three investment instruments: US equities (using SandP 500 index), bonds (using US 20-Year treasury constant maturity rate/DGS20) and wine (based on Fine Wine Investable index) using 1993–2012 (end of year) data. The investment portfolios made with two and three above-mentioned investment tools basing on H. Markowitz’s investment portfolio theory and effective curves are presented. It was found that return on investments only from equities and bonds or wine and one of these traditional instruments are signally less than from the investment mix of all three tools. Furthermore, portfolios made only from equities and bonds provide the lowest return compared to others. Choosing from two investments portfolios, results of bond/wine portfolios propose higher return with the same risk level compared to equities/wine portfolio. Consequently, despite some slowdown of wine index during financial crises, wine relevance for portfolio diversification in post crises period was proved.