Promoting fintech financing for SME in S. Caucasian and Baltic States, during the Covid-19 global pandemic

Purpose – to analyse the digitalization trends in the Central Caucasian (Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia) and Baltic States with the aim of reducing a financial gap for the Small and Medium size Enterprises in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Research methodology – comparative analysis between Baltic and Caucasian countries are made to analyse the basic positions and farther development opportunities for Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Findings of the given paper – while SME sector crucially important contributor to employment, diversification and productivity in any country of the world and especially in developing ones, they still face significant credit constraints through traditional credit providing institutions. However, the trend is changing and modern digital technologies from the fintech area are providing new alternatives, which already had been widely used in Baltic, but still are waiting their chance in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, with different level of progress and readiness. Research limitations – some statistical data does not exist for all six countries or were possible to obtain for different periods of time. Lack of academic literature on fintech in Caucasian countries. Practical implications – It can provide a useful perspective for researchers, academics, investors, investment managers, decision-makers, and scientists. Originality/Value – The paper analyses three advanced European Union member state’s (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) fintech positions and perspectives as a model of development for three developing Caucasian states (Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia)

El sistema de servidumbre en Estonia: visión general e influencia sueca

Este artículo está basado en una investigación sobre el sistema servil en Estonia y como la dominación sueca influyó en la vida cotidiana de los siervos estonios. La relevancia del tema viene dada por la peculiaridad del caso estonio que viene determinada por el carácter nacional del sistema ya que la masa campesina estaba compuesta casi exclusivamente por estonios, y por lo avanzado de las medidas suecas en materia social. El territorio que hoy configura Estonia fue ocupado durante siglos por distintos pueblos y potencias extranjeras, como los alemanes Bálticos, los daneses, los suecos, incluso por un breve periodo de tiempo los polacos, y finalmente los rusos. Aun hoy en día se hace referencia al periodo dorado, o los buenos tiempos suecos, para hablar de la ocupación sueca por lo que supuso para los derechos de la mayor parte de la población. La investigación revela ese carácter diferenciador y lo evidencia con diversas comparaciones temporales con otras partes de Europa.</p

Legal Technology for Law Firms: Determining Roadmaps for Innovation

The business model of many law firms, as legal professions on the whole, will be facing a considerable paradigm change since the work provided by law firms in the form of billable hours, in fact, largely consists of services which do not require superior legal education but involve mere data procession. It is only a question of time that the consequence – to have all outsourceable services be performed by means of legal technology – will become public knowledge in the branch, as the costs saved by the usage of legal technology are considerable. Legal technology, or Legal Tech, in this context represents a broad range of solutions that affect both lawyers and clients on various levels. However, the discourse on automatisation of law has been scant and sporadic. This paper aims to shed some light on the current operating technical solutions for innovation with the primary aim of explicating the different aims and levels of development of different legal technologies.The business model of many law firms, as legal professions on the whole, will be facing a considerable paradigm change since the work provided by law firms in the form of billable hours, in fact, largely consists of services which do not require superior legal education but involve mere data procession. It is only a question of time that the consequence – to have all outsourceable services be performed by means of legal technology – will become public knowledge in the branch, as the costs saved by the usage of legal technology are considerable. Legal technology, or Legal Tech, in this context represents a broad range of solutions that affect both lawyers and clients on various levels. However, the discourse on automatisation of law has been scant and sporadic. This paper aims to shed some light on the current operating technical solutions for innovation with the primary aim of explicating the different aims and levels of development of different legal technologies

Serfdom System In Estonia: Overview And Swedish Influence

This article is based on a research about the serfdom system in Estonia and how the Swedish domination influenced the daily life of the Estonian peasants. The relevance of this topic emanates from the Estonian peculiarity determined by the national essence of the system because the farmer frame was formed exclusively by national Estonians and because of the socially advance Swedish actions. The current territory of Estonia was occupied for several foreign people and powers, as the Baltic Germans, the Danish, Swedes, even for a short period Polish and Russians. Still currently the Swedish period is referred as the golden times, or the good Swedish time, because it has a positive print of the serf’s lives. The research reveals these differences and exposes them with several temporal comparisons with other parts of Europe. Este artículo está basado en una investigación sobre el sistema servil en Estonia y como la dominación sueca influyó en la vida cotidiana de los siervos estonios. La relevancia del tema viene dada por la peculiaridad del caso estonio que viene determinada por el carácter nacional del sistema ya que la masa campesina estaba compuesta casi exclusivamente por estonios, y por lo avanzado de las medidas suecas en materia social. El territorio que hoy configura Estonia fue ocupado durante siglos por distintos pueblos y potencias extranjeras, como los alemanes Bálticos, los daneses, los suecos, incluso por un breve periodo de tiempo los polacos, y finalmente los rusos. Aun hoy en día se hace referencia al periodo dorado, o los buenos tiempos suecos, para hablar de la ocupación sueca por lo que supuso para los derechos de la mayor parte de la población. La investigación revela ese carácter diferenciador y lo evidencia con diversas comparaciones temporales con otras partes de Europa

Informality and Ukrainian higher educational institutions: Happy together?

In post-socialist space, informal payments in educational institutions have often been at the centre of anti-corruption campaigns. A direct consequence, so far, has been that reforms in the public sector have largely been based on attempts to eradicate, or at least minimize, the phenomenon of informal payments. Ukraine is no exception. According to several independent surveys, educational institutions are second only to health care providers for the number of informal transactions recorded. While more than two in three of Ukrainians claim to have engaged with informal exchanges in the past 12 months, almost half of them has made an informal payment in an educational institution, be this a university or a school. The goal of this paper is two-fold. First, we explore the nature and relevance of the phenomenon of informal payments in the educational sector. We rely for this on quantitative studies showing how widespread informal payments are. Second, we provide an alternative explanation on informal payments by suggesting that they have an ambiguous function: while often regarded as a legacy of the socialist period, they can also be seen as a way to cope with an ineffective system that is mostly based on informal rules. By doing this we will provide some recommendations on how anti-corruption policies, and in general reforms aimed at decreasing the amount of informal payments in the country, could be improved

The Concepts of Trademark Exhaustion and Parallel Imports: A Comparative Analysis between the EU and the USA

The article intends to analyze the closely correlated concepts of trademark exhaustion and parallel imports. The growing importance of these concepts in the current world, especially in the European Union, makes it an interesting research topic, even though the concepts are complicated due to their nature and different actors involved. The authors use comparative approach, concentrating on two world leaders in the field, in order to discover what is the approach of the EU as well as the approach of the USA to the concepts of trademark exhaustion and parallel imports, what are the benefits and weaknesses of these approaches, and analyze why these markets have arrived at certain conclusions