This publication contains the papers of the PhD Candidates, National School of Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest, Romania, beneficiaries of the ― Doctoral Scholarships for a Sustainable Society, project co-financed by the European Union through the European Social Fund, Sectoral...

Most of the 60 developing countries that have established social funds are decentralizing their governments as well. But the question of how to tailor social funds - originally a highly centralized model - for a decentralizing context is scarcely addressed in the literature. This paper examines...

This paper adopts a strategic management approach (objectives, strategy, structure, control) to the study of the European Union's taxation problems. Union of States have some strengths vis-à-vis individual States. However, to ensure that all States benefit, they need constant redistribution. As...

This paper is aimed to explore theoretically the complexities and the reality in the policy making process from the point of view causality relationships among the components or actors within the system.The complexities' exploration in the paper is based on the model of the policy cycle that is...

The biggest and most well-known unsolved problem in academic finance is famously referred to as the Equity Premium Puzzle. It refers to the unexplained phenomenon that for over 100 years the average return on a well-diversified portfolio of equities has far outperformed that of risk-free,...

WHAT IS the most immediate tool of empowerment you can provide a person? Ask an economist. Or ask a laborer who has been moved to the outskirts of the city as a part of the quot;big-progressive resettlement schemequot;. Or ask a student. The most likely answer you will get is:...

The location of new homes defines the urban-rural fringe and determines many facets of the urban-rural interaction set in motion by construction of new homes in previously rural areas. Home, neighborhood and school district characteristics play a crucial role in determining the spatial location...

This paper considers the most important aspects of model uncertainty for spatial regression models, namely the appropriate spatial weight matrix to be employed and the appropriate explanatory variables. We focus on the spatial Durbin model (SDM) specification in this study that nests most models...

The development of pre-industrial Europe was driven by the expansion of trade. This paper describes the patterns of trade and shows how they can be understood in terms of differences in trading costs. It discusses how the different levels of trade?from local to transoceanic-contributed, both...

This paper explores the contribution of knowledge capital to total factor productivity differences among regions within a regression framework. We provide an econometric derivation of the relationship and show that the presence of latent/unobservable regional knowledge capital leads to a model...