European Performances regarding Flexicurity in the New Member States and Their Regions

In 2005, the revised Lisbon Strategy decided upon an integrated program of policy reforms envisaging the labor market in the context of globalization, demographic changes and fast technological progress, transposed into integrated guidelines. Such reforms aimed at increasing the employment rates, at improving work quality and labor productivity and social and territorial cohesion; in other words, at updating and upgrading the European labor markets. In order to reach such aims, the flexicurity concept was considered and employed as a key strategic framework. Flexicurity itself may be defined as an integrated strategy aiming to improve both the labor market flexibility and job security, implying successful switching between educational system and labor market, between jobs, between unemployment and inactivity and employment, and between job and retirement. We propose a possible assessment of the performances of the flexicurity policies by using certain composite indicators that allow for a multidimensional appraisal of flexicurity in the EU countries, providing also elements for comparison between the EU countries and regions (especially the New Member States and their regions).labor market, flexicurity, composite indices, New Member Stateslabor market, flexicurity, composite indices, New Member States

Intercultural Education – Tensions and Prospects Case Study – The Approach of the 1st-year Students from the Pedagogy of Primary and Pre-school Education

AbstractThe contemporary trend of the globalization does not cancel the cultural differences among the various human entities: states, nations, individuals. It currently constitutes the economic, financial, political frame, able to facilitate interactions and connections. Under these circumstances intercultural education represents a opportunity. Our study aims at identifying the way in which 1st-year students from the Pedagogy of Primary and Pre-School Education, from “Petrol-Gaze” University of Ploieşti and “Vasile Alecsandri” University of Bacău, understand this type of education and its place in the context of their training. Finally, we propose several themes and lines for approaching this education's objectives and principles

Resilient DC LV communities – UPB demonstrator

This work presents the architecture and operational features of a demonstrator developed at the premises of MicroDERLab Research Group at UPB that consists of two interconnected DC low voltage microgrids aiming to serve several research projects that focus on resilient DC LV communities. The architecture of the demonstrator uses a case-driven approach to validate and demonstrate the toolkits to be developed. Concretely, the demonstrator aims to facilitate the experimental assessments of several applications from monitoring and active power management of energy consumption in prosumers’ world, to aggregation of measurement data for modelling, planning, integration, operation and evaluation of distributed Energy Storage Systems. One of the major innovation of the proposed architecture consists in the extension of the functionality of the Unbundled Smart Meter (USM), the so called SMX side that processes all the information coming from the micro-controller of the energy router (ER). Simulated results of a distributed and adaptive energy management system to be tested on this demonstrator are also presented, while briefing a number of use-cases in line with several business models that led us to this design

The impact of standard value added tax on economic growth in CEE-5 countries: econometric analysis and simulations

The value added tax (VAT), as an instrument of fiscal policy, might have an important role on economic growth. This study analyzes the impact of standard VAT rate on economic growth in five Central and Eastern European countries (CEE-5) (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania). Different types of panel data models (random effect model, dynamic panel and panel vector-autoregression) over 1995–2015 indicated a positive influence of VAT rate on economic growth. There is a bilateral Granger causality between economic growth and VAT rate. The Bayesian linear models indicate a positive effect of VAT rate on GDP rate only for Hungary. On short-run, the other countries register lower GDP rates when VAT rates increase. Some simulations of economic growth for 2016 and 2018 were made for each CEE-5 country under different assumptions regarding VAT rate values. First published online: 23 Nov 201