The Paradigm of the Islamic Banking System

Islamic banks have constantly grown their activity and expanded across the world economy, in a matter of decades. Today, their assets cover a wide range of categories and a broad geographical area, as new financial centers emerged in Middle East and East Asia. An insight on the Islamic banking system, reveals not only a different approach to finance, but also different ways to tackle issues arisen in practice. In this respect, Islamic banks address equally to Muslim and non- Muslim customers, developed different banking products without implying the concept of “interest rate” according to holy Islamic laws, as well as created new econometrical models to monitor and estimate the dynamics. Based on innovation, the Islamic banking emerges as an alternative to classic and nowadays troubled waters of universal banking system.

Rural Space Planning as a Tool for Natural Resource Management in Slovenia

Regulated spatial planning is in large number of countries primarily concentrated on urban areas, while the rural areas are less strictly planned, especially in the context of natural resource development. As Slovenia is a small county with very limited spatial conditions for non restricted development planning (ie. flat, no geographical or/and environmental restrictions), the idea of more or less detailed spatial planning in rural areas was adopted already in early 70es. The reason for starting with this kind of planning was mainly connected with the competition between urban and industrial development planning and agriculture for the best lands. In the paper we discuss the development of methods of rural spatial planning, present effects of past approaches on usage of rural space and the proposal of the future rural areas planning models.

The Alliances of European Retailers and Their Effects in the Field of Marketing and Supply Chain

While in Romania retailing is in the growth stage, in the mature market economies of Europe, it is facing fewer development opportunities within the countries of origin. Fierce competition, more demanding customers, higher expectations, increasing pressure on prices are the common shades of the retailing landscape of these countries. Consequently, retailers have focused on the concentration and internationalization of their activities, supply chain efficiency and effectiveness, marketing strategies, prices and alliances. Among the strategies devised by the major retail players of Europe range the international alliances in the supply chain, under the form of buying groups. The paper aims to bring to light some of the major buying groups existing in Europe and to analyze their role and effects in the filed of marketing and supply chain.retailing; alliances; European Union

The Territorial Dimension of the Cohesion Policy

This paper will focus on exploring the territorial dimension of the cohesion policy of the EU as it was stated in the Community Strategic Guidelines on Cohesion, as being the capacity of the cohesion policy to adapt to the particular needs and characteristics of specific geographical challenges and opportunities. In this respect, the main territorial disparities, which led the EU decision factors to promote the territorial guidelines of the cohesion, will be emphasized. Particular attention will be paid to the various policies with impact on the territorial cohesion, as well as to the place of the territorial development on the European Agenda, namely the European Spatial Development Perspective and the Territorial Agenda of the European Union. In the end, the Romanian approach of the territorial cohesion will be presented in the framework of the programming period 2007-2013.territorial features; disparities; cohesion

Privatizing Pension Systems as the End of a Vicious Taboo of the Almighty State

At the beginning of the 80’s one South American dictator had discovered economic freedom, while Europe’s democracies were refining the Bismarckian objective of intergeneration dependency. Enlightened by the economist José Piñera, an unknown figure at the time, he had realized that pensions were supposed to be responsible savings and not a discretionary right against society. Augusto Pinochet would terminate the public pension system in Chile and he would also determine the governments of the “free world” to enter serious debates. Today, more and more reports warn that Europe’s population is ageing and shrinking. The sustainability of public pension systems is becoming more vulnerable by the year. The EU already sees dark clouds approaching public finance. The solutions circulated – e.g. facilitating immigration in order to restore the balance of the labour market or parametric reform of the existing pension systems – do not tackle, though, with programmatic errors of such a mechanism in which, invariably, the guilty are always the people that do not grow old by bureaucrats calculus.welfare state; economic freedom; public pensions; private pensions

Economic Security in the Black Sea Region

Berry Buzan and the Copenhagen School proposed three new dimensions of security in order to complete it’s the narrow political and military components. These are the economic, societal and environmental dimensions. The result is that economic factor came to be considered the building block of the other aspects of security. This idea is supported by NATO’s new strategic concept (defined in 1991) stating that security and stability have political, economic, societal and environmental elements; and also by the EU’s efforts of building the Common Foreign and Security Policy, were it applies economics, its strongest points, in the military security, one of its weakest points. Ensuring a country’s economic security considers the identification and management of dysfunctions, vulnerabilities, risks and threats to economic stability and strategic decisions independence concerning vital resources. The paper will attempt to analyze the implications of applying the concept of economic security in the Black Sea extend area and highlight the link between the development model and interdependencies in international cooperation.economic security; cooperation; Black Sea; energy

European challenges for Islamic Banking

The paper briefly review the growth in Islamic Finance, implications of the Islamic banking in Europe and challenges to be met, in terms of compatibility with local banking markets, product development and strict anti-money laundering rules. The paper analyses also the hawala remittance system and the negative association with the Islamic banks. This type of funds transfer is often related with illegal remittances, money laundering and financial crime. As acting as European banks, newly established in Europe Islamic banks, as new comers, will have to face the critics about their possible link with terrorism support and money laundering.hawala; interest- free; money laundering

Development Management for the Companies that Act in the Romanian Processing Industry

As the opportunities given to Romanian companies rose, due to the global market process, while growing competition, at both macro and micro-economical level, so grew the necessity for an analysis able to stress competitively and to substantiate the best developing means. At C.A.E.N. division level it appeared the necessity to calculate the internal market quota and imports/exports ratio, in order to rank the processing national companies from the competitive abilities` point of view versus external competition. It was also evaluated the representation degree of various indexes as far as companies` competitively is concerned for seven industrial fields of the national processing industry, using the Excel Regression Module, by multiple regression. The conclusions drown afterwards can help company managers who aim to develop, to base their decisions an elements with a high positive effect and to efficiently use available resources.

Competitiveness Evaluation of Slovenian Economy

Evaluation of competitiveness became an important instrument for balancing the development process of the economy. For Slovenia it is important tool for policy creation. Benchmarking with more developed countries shows us the right directions of development process. Competitiveness can be analysed from different sides. Existed studies have focused on several different analytical levels: product, firm, industry cluster, region and nation. The most successful economies are raising the skill content of their labour force. By reducing transportation and communication costs, it links economies and societies into closer, tighter webs. It facilitates the integration of production under common ownership (transnational companies), allowing access to capital flows, world markets, skills, and technology. Competitiveness evaluation of Slovenian economy shows us that the problems remain the same during the enlargement process of the European Union. Competitiveness is defined as the quality of the economic and institutional environment for the sustainable development of private productive activities and the increise in productivity. Today we focuse more on policies and strategies on institutional and also on business level that mainatain the long-term competitiveness. Competitiveness can be seen as the collection of factors, policies and institutions which determine the level of productivity of a country and that, therefore, determine the level of prosperity that can be attained by an economy. In the paper I will evaluate the Slovenian competitiveness by SWOT analysis. After European enlargement we can see that some CEE countries have benefited more than other countries. Slovenia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia have increased the locational attractiveness for business sector and also improved the institutional competitiveness. Harmonization with EU legislation and adoption of “Acquis Communautaire” have improved the institutions and the legal system. On the other side, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria have problems connected with the enlargement process. Because these latter countries stayed outside the first enlargement process, they have, in addition to their originally less competitive, position lower competitiveness possibilities. The integration process increased the possibilities for benchmarking. Today is more common to benchmark different countries and compare the main determinants of competitiveness. Evaluation of competitiveness is an important tool for economic policy. Slovenia as a small country can be analysed from the view of regional competitiveness. Improving competitiveness is not about driving down living standards. It is about creating a high skills, high productivity and therefore high wage economy where enterprise can flourish and where we can find opportunities rather than threats in changes we cannot avoid. Many governments seriously peruse national competitiveness rankings produced by WEF or IMD. The study of competitiveness strategy is now a very important obligation of government. All new member countries have high-level official committees to deal with competitiveness, reaching across ministerial divisions to devise international, national or regional policy.productivity and competitiveness; benchmarking; development strategy; national development