Entrepreneurial Developments and Challenges in the Sud Muntenia Region of Romania

Entrepreneurship is crucial for the economic development of a region. Using entropy, cluster and shift-share analysis techniques, the authors present a detailed picture of the entrepreneurial milieu of the Sud Muntenia region of Romania, pointing both towards the presence of an overall development process, and also to inter-county and intra-county sectoral imbalances, evolutionary discrepancies and lack of adequate use of territorial resources. Policy recommendations are proposed to address the future challenges for the balanced development of the Sud Muntenia region of Romania. Keywords: entrepreneurship, territorial development, regional business demography, sectoral structure, regional policy JEL Classification: O18, R11, R12, R30

The impact of poverty on mental health and well-being and the necessity for integrated social policies in Romania

On almost every account people with mental health problems are among the most excluded groups in society and they consistently identify stigmatisation, discrimination and exclusion as major barriers to health, welfare and quality of life. The links between poverty and ill health are well known. Poverty and illness together make people much more vulnerable and needy at all stages of their lives, and even more so in old age. Mental health is often both a cause and a consequence of poverty, compromised education, vulnerability, difficulty accessing housing, health care and employment, and lack of access to welfare, social security, and community public services. Inequalities between social classes in the incidence of chronic illness and mental illness and in life expectancy are also well documented. The working class poor with health problems are a particularly vulnerable group. Moreover people with mental health problems are more likely to experience physical health problems, which can further compromise the efforts of the individual in an already disadvantaged situation. When the experience of mental illness is the cause or a factor in the experience of exclusion, the effects can be still more damaging. This mutual interaction linking mental health and development can work positively with good mental health facilitating the active and successful involvement of individuals and communities in development, and negatively with poor mental health increasing the risk of descending into a vicious cycle of poverty and adverse social and health outcomes. Designing social policies and interventions - both within and outside the health sector - which strengthen social inclusion, represent a key action recommended by the European Pact for Mental Health and Wellbeing. This paper explores the situation of persons affected by severe mental illness on regional level in Romania. The need for policy development and improvement strategies are also highlighted.

Entrepreneurial Developments and Challenges in the Sud Muntenia Region of Romania

Entrepreneurship is crucial for the economic development of a region. Using entropy, cluster and shift-share analysis techniques, the authors present a detailed picture of the entrepreneurial milieu of the Sud Muntenia region of Romania, pointing both towards the presence of an overall development process, and also to inter-county and intra-county sectoral imbalances, evolutionary discrepancies and lack of adequate use of territorial resources. Policy recommendations are proposed to address the future challenges for the balanced development of the Sud Muntenia region of Romania

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

ROMANIAN FOREIGN TRADE WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION-DINAMICS AND TRENDS

The paper presents briefly the evolutions in world trade and Romanian foreign trade, especially with the EU. A significant increase in exports, but also in imports was recorded over the interval 2000-2011, accompanied by major structural changes: decline in the shares of low value added and labor intensive products and advance of the more technologically advanced products. However, Romania's trade balance with the EU and most countries in this region remained negative, similar to other new Member States, which generally import more from than export to the EU. Years 2009-2011 marked a sharp drop and a relative stabilization of the trade deficit with the EU, due to significant reduction in exports, but especially in imports, and to the adjustments induced by the crisis after 2008

Some Perpetually Old and New Development Issues in the EU Regions: Competitiveness, Resilience, and Convergence: Where Do the New Member States Stand?

Competitiveness, resilience, and convergence were topics that for decades were listed among the hot issues that have animated the scientific and political debates in the area of economic growth and economic development. For the new member states (NMS) of the European Union, which have accessed the Union since 2004, competitiveness and cohesion became from the first days of their EU membership key topics on their national policy agendas, both as directives of the EU policies to be transposed and implemented nationally and as genuine domestic concerns to be addressed by each of the NMS, while resilience revealed its importance a little bit later, on the occasion of the global economic crisis of 2008–2010 and subsequent recession. Considering their importance for the current and future socioeconomic development of the new member states, the authors present and briefly analyze the topics of competitiveness, resilience, and cohesion in a joint framework, at regional level, based on their common roots within the economic growth and development theories, with the help of a minimal, but powerful, set of relevant indicators, over three significant recent periods: ante-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis. The findings point toward both different and similar competitiveness, resilience, and convergence developments within the new member states and across countries, regions, and periods, also revealing growth and adaptation patterns similar to those found in the more developed regions and countries of the EU, especially in the wake of the global economic crisis

The impact of poverty on mental health and well-being and the necessity for integrated social policies in Romania

On almost every account people with mental health problems are among the most excluded groups in society and they consistently identify stigmatisation, discrimination and exclusion as major barriers to health, welfare and quality of life. The links between poverty and ill health are well known. Poverty and illness together make people much more vulnerable and needy at all stages of their lives, and even more so in old age. Mental health is often both a cause and a consequence of poverty, compromised education, vulnerability, difficulty accessing housing, health care and employment, and lack of access to welfare, social security, and community public services. Inequalities between social classes in the incidence of chronic illness and mental illness and in life expectancy are also well documented. The working class poor with health problems are a particularly vulnerable group. Moreover people with mental health problems are more likely to experience physical health problems, which can further compromise the efforts of the individual in an already disadvantaged situation. When the experience of mental illness is the cause or a factor in the experience of exclusion, the effects can be still more damaging. This mutual interaction linking mental health and development can work positively with good mental health facilitating the active and successful involvement of individuals and communities in development, and negatively with poor mental health increasing the risk of descending into a vicious cycle of poverty and adverse social and health outcomes. Designing social policies and interventions - both within and outside the health sector - which strengthen social inclusion, represent a key action recommended by the European Pact for Mental Health and Wellbeing. This paper explores the situation of persons affected by severe mental illness on regional level in Romania. The need for policy development and improvement strategies are also highlighted

European Performances regarding Flexicurity. The Case of the New Member States

The revised Lisbon Strategy has decided upon an integrated programme of policy reforms envisaging the labor market in the context of globalization, demographic changes and fast technological progress, transposed into the 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 is increasingly 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 perormances 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)

Model of Comparative Analysis of the Main Indices of Economic and Social Performance of the European Union Countries

In the context of current economic and financial crisis a comparative analysis of the main indices of economic and social performance of the EU member states is necessary. In such line of argument, the authors propose, as novelty, an economic power-economic performance matrix as a methodological instrument for monitoring significant discontinuities in the development of the EU member states, able to provide consistent information about some of the threats against the EU economic sustainability. The core idea is to use integrating criteria able to reveal in a clear manner the results of the common efforts of governments, businesses and civil society aiming to improve the economic and social performance of the 27 EU countries. Developing their previous research, the authors propose a model based on 16 criteria grouped into 6 domains, selected on the basis of thorough analyses of the main medium-term determinants of a country's economic and social performance (referring to overall economic performance, structure of economy, foreign trade efficiency, human development policies, informational society and tourism incomes, as proxy for infrastructure development). The economic power-economic performance matrix built on the basis of such a model for all the EU countries revealed a single net leader, both in terms of economic power and economic performance (Germany), but also high significant negative discrepancies between economic power and economic performance, both among the countries with higher economic power (United Kingdom, Italy, Spain) and among the countries with lower economic power (Greece and Romania)

THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURES IN THE ROMANIAN REGIONS AND COUNTIES AND THE EU MEMBER STATES. COMPARATIVE ANALYSES.

Bridging the gap between countries, and thus decresing poverty, is the greatest challenge of European countries in the context of the European social cohesion. The risk of future economic difficulties caused by the size of budget deficits is beared by the funds to be allocated to social inclusion in the EU and the EU member countries. They will be concerned in the post-crisis period with aligning the requirements of progress, of poverty reduction, but also of ensuring the sustainability of public finances. For Romania, cohesion is particularly important as most regions show significant differences as compared to the EU average and the national average. This group also includes the South Muntenia Region, which has many advantages for faster progress and to be able to exploit the opportunities offered by the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy