THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE DIGITAL CONSUMER

This paper reveals certain directions which can be followed by the consumer of digital media and also shows which are the challenges that should be taken in consideration by the administrators of these media during the next years. This work has mainly an empirical nature and is based on various international and domestic studies and on external statistics at EU level, too.digital consumer, the exponential growth,the on-line environment,mobile payment.

Interactions between financial markets and macroeconomic variables in EU: a nonlinear modeling approach

There is a general acceptance of the fact that a significant direct relationship between financial markets and macroeconomic variables exists, especially by considering the assertion that developed financial markets correspond to high GDP levels. This paper provides an investigation of the correlation between the market capitalization and stock market dynamics on one hand and GDP per capita on the other hand, for two groups of regions in EU (western countries, EU15, and central and eastern countries, EU11). Based on data for a number of EU countries (both western and eastern) and using some special modelling techniques, we provide an analysis of the convergence phenomenon for both the macroeconomic variables and the financial ones. Using a deep time resolution and some spline functions we generated high frequency time series (the so-called virtual monthly GDP) to investigate the correlations with financial markets. In spite of ECB?s carefull monitoring of the financial integration within the euro zone, a possible financial integration process within the non-euro zone continues to be ignored. It seems that due to the weak development of financial markets, the economies outside of the euro zone are relatively more protected against crisis when compared to those inside the euro zone. Therefore, the so-called contagion effect is weaker in the Central and Eastern region of European Union

A Model to Simulate the Convergence Process in the EU and in the Balkans Region Based on Empirical Evidence

In the context of many new challenges for the EU economy, convergence continues to be one of the main goals in the long run. This paper provides empirical evidence in support of a significant trend of convergence for the EU28 countries after 2000. Investigating the drivers of this trend, we concurrently developed an analysis of convergence for each of the three EU conventional groups and we document rather different results, i.e. strong convergence for the group of former eastern communist countries (EU11E), slow convergence in the group of Southern countries (EU6S), and a trend of slow divergence for the group of North-Western countries (EU11NW). Moreover, taking into account the new Western Balkan candidate countries (EU6B, comprising Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia), we analyzed the convergence among these four groups of countries in an extended EU, conventionally denoted as EU34. Our study suggests the existence of complex dynamics that feature the EU34 economic system of heterogeneous economies. When separating the region into two zones based on the average level of income per capita, we notice completely different behaviors: on the left side an accelerated convergence to the average level of the system prevails, while the right side features a general slow divergence interrupted by some periods of convergence; the distribution could be far from a normal distribution for which the behavior is linear; around the average level, the behavior may change dramatically, uncovering an instability sub-zone, with higher stability only far from the average level on the right side. Keywords: European Union, Balkans region, Convergence, Divergence, Economic Growth, Behavioural regime

Can monetary policy lean against housing bubbles?

Gali and Gambetti (2015) found protracted episodes in which stock prices rise in response to monetary policy tightening. This counter-intuitive result suggests that raising the policy rate in response to a perceived asset price deviation from fundamentals may fail to contain an emerging bubble. Since housing is often at the epicenter of deep and protracted recessions, it is essential (from a monetary policy perspective) to assess whether the result from Gali and Gambetti (2015) also holds when one considers housing instead of stock prices. Thus, we estimated a Bayesian VAR model based on an asset-pricing framework allowing for rational bubbles in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. In addition, this estimation framework separates the fundamental component of housing prices from its bubble component, derived as the deviation of observed prices from the fundamental values. This allowed us to examine the responses of both components to a monetary policy shock and assess how bubbles may affect the responses of housing prices to monetary policy tightening. According to the results, we found that housing prices respond negatively to an interest rate hike, as common intuition would imply. This indicates that monetary policy may play a role in fighting housing price bubbles.The Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, CNCS - UEFISCDI.https://www.journals.elsevier.com/economic-modellinghj2022Economic

CO-MOVEMENTS OF REGIME SHIFTS IN GBP CURRENCY PAIRS AROUND BOE QUANTITATIVE EASING ANNOUNCEMENTS

In the current post-crisis era, the events with the highest probability to move the financial markets are the announcements of financial authorities concerning the quantitative easing decisions. The objective of this paper is to build an analysis of the existence of connections among the GBP currency pairs in terms of regime switching that could be related to the moments when the Bank of England generated announcements about its monetary decisions

A MIXED FREQUENCY ANALYSIS OF CONNECTIONS BETWEEN MACROECONOMIC VARIABLES AND STOCK MARKETS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

The importance of connections between macroeconomic growth and financial markets is studied for a long time in the academic research. The special case of the developing countries, which is the case of the Central and Eastern European economies highlights this phenomenon even more, as many of them are still at the verge of reforming their economies. Our paper proposes the use of MIDAS regression in an analysis of the connections between macroeconomic growth and equity markets in this region in order to exhibit the importance of the latter for the reform strategies

POLICIES FOR PROMOTING COMPETITIVENESS IN EASTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EUROPE 2020 STRATEGY

The present paper aims to identify the competitiveness gap between ten Eastern and Central European (ECE) countries and effective measures for bridging this gap. We find that Romania and Bulgaria are far behind the European countries that joined the European Union (EU) in 2004 in terms of competitiveness. Moreover, since the adhesion year, Romania and Bulgaria competitiveness improved very slowly, while other European countries accelerated their growth in terms of competitiveness. For this reason, the living standard of Romanians and Bulgarians increased very little compared to the increases in the rest of the ECE countries. For proving that increasing competitiveness drives an increase in GDP per capita, we also identify the gap between the actual GDP per capita and the potential GDP per capita if each of the analysed countries would apply the European Commission recommended measures for boosting competitiveness, as described in the Europe 2020 Strategy. We conclude that, unless harsh measures are imposed for increasing competitiveness, Romania and Bulgaria risk to remain far behind the rest of the analyzed countries. In this respect, we propose public policies actions based on other ECE countries good practices focused on the domains Romania and Bulgaria must improve

The Nexus Between Research and Development, Protection of Intellectual Property Rights and Financial Development. A European Perspectiv

Considering the role of research and development in increasing knowledge with creative work, in this study, we analyse the link between research and development expenditures in several performance sectors (business, government, higher education) and indicators regarding the protection of intellectual property rights and financial development. The analysis refers to the member states of the European Union, divided into two categories (Central and Eastern Europe and Western Europe), for the period 2007-2020. The results obtained after using a panel data methodology suggest that the settings are different for the two groups of countries. This new perspective (i.e., the disparity between regions and the type of sector) can be considered as evidence in favour of decisions to support research and development expenditures in sensitive situations

Lawrence R. Klein and the Economic Forecasting - A Survey

Lawrence Robert Klein played a fundamental role in the genesis and development of econometric applications and forecasting. The work dedicated to forecasting earned him the 1980 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences "for the creation of econometric models and their application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies”. His pioneering initiatives and his research that spanned over almost 70 years make L. R. Klein one of the key figures in macroeconomics and econometrics