Empirical studies on remittances revealed their key role for the household consumption of the receiving families, as well as their investment potential with direct influence on economic development in emigrant's country of origin. This paper focuses on the second approach by treating remittances as capital flows that have macroeconomic growth potential. Aiming to test this hypothesis, we constructed a two growth models that include remittances as the variable of interest, alongside the traditional production factors. The models have been tested using aggregate data that cover ten countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) over 1995-2011. Panel estimation methods were employed to account for potential cross-section heterogeneity. The main result is the significant positive influence of remittances on both absolute and relative GDP growth in our panel of CEE countries

This paper investigates the distinct mechanisms through which energy poverty is linked to life satisfaction, via health status and one’s satisfaction with one’s own socioeconomic status, using data from the Life in Transition survey. Our sample contains 19,598 individuals from 11 former communist states located in Central and Eastern Europe, and two developed countries for comparison. We estimated a partial least squared–path model and found that both health status and socioeconomic status are relevant mediators. Our results also indicate that gender moderates the relation between health status and life satisfaction. Energy poverty has a low contribution to health status but a larger contribution to satisfaction with socioeconomic status, thus indicating that interventions on energy poverty may not greatly improve the level of health, but can have an influence on how people feel about their life. The contribution of our paper is twofold. On the one side, we continue to consolidate the existing link between energy poverty and self-reported health status with a new focus on the Central and Eastern European countries; on another side, we propose a theoretical framework expansion by including totally novel factors to be analyzed in this context: satisfaction with socioeconomic status, economic environment improvement, and intolerance.

Shadow economy (SE) represents a complex phenomenon, which is having undoubtedly many negative sides and undesirable implications upon economy and society, but might also have some good effects, offering social self-protection and alternative solutions for unemployment, insufficient consumption and investment in the official economy, etc. Since the attempts to analyze SE based on only one indicator may be misleading, we developed a new synthetic index of SE that includes three relevant indicators: SE measured in euro per inhabitant, SE as percentage of GDP and SE of each EU member state as percentage of the total EU-28 shadow economy. We analyse these three indicators, as well as the synthetic index of SE, for Romania, over 1999-2012. The synthetic index of shadow economy is further introduced into an econometric model in order to assess its impact on the Romania's economic growth. We have tested the links between shadow economy and economic growth in Romania and found a cointegrating relationship, suggesting that SE is consistently related to the official economy and they display similar trends on the long-run

Starting from the increased regional inequalities after Romania's accession to EU, this paper aims to explore regional against national post-accession growth path. The study uses a specific regional investigation tool, namely the shift-share analysis that is able to disentangle national, sectoral and territorial trends. We performed the analysis for the post-accession period, further divided into two sub-intervals: 2007-2008 (economic growth) and 2009-2011 (economic crisis) and found distinct regional development patterns for these periods. The results from the shift-share analysis suggest that the developed regions can recover more easily from the crisis, due to their economic potential, and the regional disparities are likely to deepen unless appropriate regional policies are enforced

Entrepreneurship plays a key role in transforming the economy and society by stimulating economic development, testing innovative ideas, creating new jobs, and by enriching the quality of life and human existence. Entrepreneurship dynamics depend upon a series of local and national economic factors, but are also affected by the international environment, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. Statistical data show that new businesses are created at a slower rate during an economic crisis, when the economic climate is harsh, and business opportunities are scarce. Nevertheless, there are local differences in the reaction to crises, and new business formation tends to decline with variable intensity from one region to another, even in the same country. The crises are acting as a trigger for some opportunity-driven entrepreneurs, and resilient regions can thrive even in times of crisis or recover faster after a depression. To capture spatial interactions, as well as spatial short- and long-term effects, the method employed in our analysis relies on the estimation of dynamic spatial panel models. We tested the potential impact of a large variety of social and economic indicators on the creation of new firms and found that the most consequential factors of influence are the economic crisis (expressed through a binary variable), GDP per capita, FDI per capita, inflation, unemployment, and education. Our results convey a powerful policy message for both national and regional decision makers. We believe that, while putting entrepreneurial initiative to the test, the current COVID-19 crisis might act as a catalyst that leads to innovation and reshapes the economy and society.