Research background: Deteriorating economic conditions and a negative outlook increase the pressure on financial management and the need to show high financial performance. According to Positive Accounting Theory, the growing risk of bankruptcy is associated with the phenomenon of earnings management. Bankruptcy risk and the quality of reported profits, along with other aspects of financial performance, vary throughout the company's life cycle. Nevertheless, these factors or their interactions are investigated only to a very small extent. Purpose of the article: The aim of this study is to clarify the impact of corporate life cycle and bankruptcy on earnings management, in order to describe behaviour of companies at different stages of corporate life cycle. Methods: A hierarchical mixed model with a random time and industry effect was chosen as appropriate because it allows the investigation of multilevel data that is not independent. The sample covers the financial indicators of more than 33,000 Central European companies from 2015?2019. The non-sequential Dickinson model, company age, and three models of accrual earnings management were used as proxies for the company's life cycle and quality of reported profit. Findings & value added: Earnings management and bankruptcy risk have a U-shape, indicating that financially distressed firms reduce reported accounting profit at the Introduction, Decline and, to a lesser extent, at the Growth stage. Slovak and Czech companies manipulate profits to a similar extent, Hungarian companies increase accounting profit to a greatest extent than the surveyed countries by controlling bankruptcy ? life cycle effect; however, the variability of accounting manipulations across industries has not been demonstrated. These findings imply that start-ups and declining businesses provide crooked financial statements to obtain more favourable debt covenants, and estimating discretionary accruals using life-cycle subsamples can improve the predictive power of accrual earnings management models.

The character, the motion and the proportion of environment-induced migration have radically changed in recent years. Environment-induced migration is an increasingly recognized fact and has become one of the main challenges of the 21st century, and needs to be focused on to ensure sustainable growth. This new stance is due to the changing character of environmental degradation. Global environmental issues, including climate change, loss of biodiversity, river and oceanic contamination, land degradation, drought, and the destruction of rainforests, are progressively stressing the earth’s ecosystems. Among these issues, climate change is one of the most severe threats. Climate change alone does not directly induce people to move but it generates harmful environmental effects and worsens present vulnerabilities. The current study aims to provide cornerstone links between the effects of climate change, migration decisions, displacement risk and conflicts in the example of Afghanistan, as a country that is extremely affected by both climate change and conflicts, and outline priority policy focuses to mitigate the current situation in the country.

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Britain saw, between 2004 and 2014, a large number of movers arriving from the new member states of the European Union in Eastern Europe. Polish movers, being the largest national group, received much attention from academia, media and the wider public. Nevertheless, the movers from smaller nations, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia, the A3 countries, have been overlooked. This article explores the labour market outcomes in relation to qualifications for migrant workers from these three countries in Britain. Our analysis is based on the 2012 Annual Population Survey data. Findings show that there were significant differences indicating possible disadvantages and discrimination faced by these migrant workers. Over-qualification was relatively high among the movers from the three selected countries.

Research background: The world has been fighting the new pandemic caused by COVID-19 since March 2020. The subsequent restrictions on economic activity resulted in a supply shock, accompanied by a supply chain disruption, job layoffs, reduced work time and wages and decreased disposable incomes and taxes, which led to a demand shock. However, whether a close link exists between the number of confirmed cases, deaths and economic indicators during the COVID-19 pandemic remains uncertain. Purpose of the article: The current study aims to analyse the impact of the number of infections and deaths on economic growth and labour market indicators in the member states of the European Union. Methods: To achieve the main research goal, we conduct a panel data analysis on the quarterly data of 2020. Specifically, we developed three random-effects panel data econometric models to estimate the significance of infection and mortality rates for economic growth as well as employment and unemployment rates. Findings & value added: This study contributes to the existing literature by analysing the link between the infection and mortality rates of COVID-19 and selecting macro-economic indicators within the European Union. The results show that the infection rate is not a significant variable for economic growth and labour market indicators. However, an increase in the number of confirmed deaths has a significantly negative impact on the economy. Moreover, an increase in the mortality rate has a worse impact on the labour market than on economic growth in general. These results can serve as a theoretical basis for future research on the interconnections between pandemics and macro-economic indicators. The findings can also contribute to developing efficient policy instruments for mitigating the negative impact of pandemics in the future, thereby ensuring the cooperation of fiscal, monetary and health policy authorities.

The ageing population, demographic change and a lack of skilled labour in the EU are increasingly provoking governments to apply direct measures to aggressively recruit economic migrants, particularly high skilled individuals (HSIs). As most countries in the EU face similar challenges, attracting HSIs from the third countries are predominantly vital. One of the EU-wide programs to attract skilled professionals is the Blue Card program, which was introduced in 2009 as part of the European Council Directive to focus on highly qualified employment, aimed at making Europe an appropriate host region for qualified workers from the non-EU countries. The EU Blue Card programme is adopted by 25 EU member states, apart from Ireland, Denmark and the United Kingdom. In this article, we discussed underlying features of the EU Blue Card program with a particular focus on the Finnish experience as one of the most successful the EU countries in attracting and retaining talent and HSIs.

Foreign-born population in Slovakia has been growing steadily over recent years. Since 2018, foreigners from the so-called third countries have become dominant within the immigrant population. The migration crisis due to the Pandemic seems not affected the patterns of migration to Slovakia. We would argue that the need in Slovakia‘s domestic labour market affected immigration flows more than anything else. Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic, due to emigration flows, there was a shortage of labour in the country. However, as a result of the restrictive measures taken by the government in response to the Pandemic, changes are taking place, which also has an impact on the employment of foreigners. During the Pandemic, several laws regulating the legal status of foreigners in the Slovak Republic have been amended. This article focuses on the legislative developments in shaping the Slovak migration policy in the near future.