The Impact of Public Expenditures on Economic Growth: A Case Study of Central and Eastern European Countries

This study tests the importance of various categories of public expenditure, the functional structure, and growth in the gross domestic product (GDP), using an autoregressive-distributed lag (ARDL) model. We document and study the correlation between real GDP growth and 10 different categories of public expenditure, according to their functional classification, using quarterly data for the period 1995–2015, for 10 selected Central and Eastern European countries that joined the European Union. The results of our study, like most recent literature, show that expenditures on education and health care have a positive impact on the economy, while expenditures on defense, economic affairs, general public services, and social welfare have a negative impact.     

A constructive proof of the ordinal efficiency welfare theorem

We provide a non-geometric constructive short proof of the ordinal efficiency welfare theorem.     

The tax–spending nexus: evidence from Romania using wavelet analysis

This article investigates the relationship between government revenue and expenditure in Romania between 1991 and 2015 using the wavelet approach. The article presents detailed information for different sub-periods and frequencies, emphasising the lead–lag nexus between variables under cyclical and anti-cyclical shocks. The main findings show that using individual taxation techniques under structural reforms should control short-term budget deficits. Separately, when an economic crisis arises, expenditure adjustment is a more appropriate fiscal instrument. In the medium and long term, the taxation system for individuals is recommended to be used to control for budgetary deficits during crisis. At the same time, in the medium term, government expenditures also represent a suitable policy choice.     

Convergence of bank competition in Central and Eastern European countries: do foreign and domestic banks go hand in hand?

Following the massive entry of foreign banks into the Central and Eastern European (CEE) banking markets, one may wonder whether their competitive behaviour differs from that of their domestic counterparts, possibly leading to the segmentation of these markets at the regional and national levels. We find that the competitive behaviour of foreign and domestic banks differs, with foreign banks having less market power until the recent financial crisis and more market power after this financial turmoil. Despite this difference, banks tend to behave similarly, and their market power converges to a similar level. The tendency towards similar competitive behaviour is observed at the regional and national levels and for both foreign and domestic banks, although foreign institutions that enter these markets through the acquisition of domestic banks have slightly more market power. Our findings suggest the regional integration of CEE banking markets and no segmentation between foreign and domestic institutions.     

The impact of adoptive management innovations on medium-sized enterprises from a dynamic capability perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the nature of adaptive managerial innovation and its effects on organisational dynamic capabilities. Using an original model based on 16 items and PLS – SEM instrument on a sample of 261 Romanian companies, we conclusively demonstrated that dynamic capabilities are an important determinant for management of innovation. Our study further reveals the positive effects of sensing, absorptive and integrative capabilities upon the innovation process. We consider that our study contributes to the development of pragmatic approaches on organisational dynamic capabilities and management of innovation literature.     

Serial dictatorship and Pareto optimality

In a deterministic allocation problem in which each agent is entitled to receive exactly one object, an allocation is Pareto optimal if and only if it is the outcome of a serial dictatorship. We extend the definition of serial dictatorship to settings in which some agents may be entitled to receive more than one object, and study the efficiency and uniqueness properties of the equilibrium allocations. We prove that subgame perfect equilibrium allocations of serial dictatorship games are not necessarily Pareto optimal; and generally not all Pareto optima can be implemented as subgame perfect equilibrium allocations of serial dictatorship games, except in the 2-agent separable preference case. Moreover, serial dictatorship games do not necessarily have unique subgame perfect equilibrium allocations, except in the 2-agent case, hence their outcomes are indeterminate and manipulable.     

A method for evaluating and selecting field experiment locations

When marketing researchers perform field experiments, it is crucial that the experimental location and the control location are comparable. At present, it is difficult to assess the comparability of field locations because there is no way to distinguish differences between locations that are due to random versus systematic factors. To accomplish this, we propose a methodology that enables field researchers to evaluate and select optimal field locations by parsing these random versus systematic effects. To determine the accuracy of our proposed methodology, we performed computer simulations with 10,000 cases per simulation. The simulations demonstrate that accuracy increases as the number of data points increases and as consistency increases.