Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, higher educational institutions worldwide switched to emergency distance learning in early 2020. The less structured environment of distance learning forced students to regulate their learning and motivation more independently. According to self-determination theory (SDT), satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and social relatedness affects intrinsic motivation, which in turn relates to more active or passive learning behavior. As the social context plays a major role for basic need satisfaction, distance learning may impair basic need satisfaction and thus intrinsic motivation and learning behavior. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between basic need satisfaction and procrastination and persistence in the context of emergency distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in a cross-sectional study. We also investigated the mediating role of intrinsic motivation in this relationship. Furthermore, to test the universal importance of SDT for intrinsic motivation and learning behavior under these circumstances in different countries, we collected data in Europe, Asia and North America. A total of N = 15,462 participants from Albania, Austria, China, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Kosovo, Lithuania, Poland, Malta, North Macedonia, Romania, Sweden, and the US answered questions regarding perceived competence, autonomy, social relatedness, intrinsic motivation, procrastination, persistence, and sociodemographic background. Our results support SDT’s claim of universality regarding the relation between basic psychological need fulfilment, intrinsic motivation, procrastination, and persistence. However, whereas perceived competence had the highest direct effect on procrastination and persistence, social relatedness was mainly influential via intrinsic motivation.

The current health crisis has several socioeconomic influences that could be compared to those experienced during the 2008 economic and financial crisis. Governments around the world are making great efforts to sustain markets as there are signs showing that the health crisis will be followed by an economic crisis. In this study, we aim to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the Romanian stock market. For this purpose, we considered the influence on the Bucharest Exchange Trading (BET) index of such variables as the number of new cases and the number of new deaths caused by COVID-19, measures taken by authorities, and the international economic context. The collected data covered the period between 11 March 2020 and 30 April 2021. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bound cointegration test was used to measure the impact of COVID-19 on the stock market. The results showed a significant long-term negative impact of the pandemic on the BET index for Romania, while the European economic context had a positive influence. Therefore, these results could be used by authorities as a good guideline for the efficient management of measures that aim to reduce the negative effects of the healthcare crisis.

The role of the interest and exchange rates in sustaining economic growth has been a highly researched subject. Therefore, this study examines the influence of the monetary policy interest rate, the real exchange rate and the business climate in the Euro area on the economic growth in Romania. For this purpose, we have applied a pre-test for structural breaks to identify the existence of structural breaks, followed by the traditional unit root tests and the unit root tests with structural breaks to verify the stationarity of the variables. The results of the Bound cointegration test led to the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) short-run model that measures the short-run impact of the interest rate, exchange rate and the business climate in the Euro area on the economic growth of Romania. Our findings show that in the short run, the economic growth is negatively influenced by the interest rate, and positively by the exchange rate. We also indicate that the business climate in the Euro area has mixed effects on the economic growth. Finally, considering the growing interdependence between the internal and external (European) business environment, the results are highly significant for handling the interest and exchange rates in sustaining economic growth.

Sustainable development theory is formed around its major task of balancing the performances of economic, social and environmental sectors. The main aim of this integrative process is to offer consistent and healthy national progress. Besides the theory and the recommendations (abundant in the academic literature, but also in the political discourse) based on its main dimensions, the reality apparently reveals an irregular evolution of the economic, social and environment sectors' results. Observation of this evolution may represent a support for both mainstream sustainable

The circular economy, an evolving concept, is considered a necessary and pragmatic solution for reconciling the link between the growth rate and the pressure on the resources of the environment. Therefore, the purpose of the paper is the quantitative assessment of the circular economy in the OECD countries based on the indicators assembled by the authors. The goal set was achieved through both a theoretical and empirical objective. The theoretical objective is to combine and group indicators referring to the circular economy, as they are present in the literature. The empirical objective is to develop a model of causal analysis with significance for circular economy practice, based on indicators that measure economic growth, research-development, education, recycling. To achieve the empirical objective, cluster analysis, correlation analysis and path analysis were applied. The authors' contribution consists of adapting circular economy indicators to the 5 newly created classes and applying the statistical methods mentioned in the OECD circular economy analysis. The results of empirical research reflect, on the one hand, the classification of countries for a set of indicators of the circular economy and the significant links and dependencies between the indicators analysed on the other.

The actual development challenges impose new criteria of national performance evaluation, the concept of wellbeing tending to be measured not just in terms of economic and social dimensions, but also vs. the environment. Accordingly, considering the national environmental performance among the EU countries in 2006–2019 period, we grouped them and concentrated on the clusters registering the highest and lowest levels, analyzing how the components of the human and economic dimensions influence it. Applying panel data models, our main results emphasized that, firstly, for the countries with a better environmental performance, sufficient drinking water, safe sanitation, education, gender equality, and good governance were significant; in the countries with the lowest levels of environmental wellbeing, sufficient food, sufficient to drink, education, and income distribution were insignificant, while the remaining components were relevant. Secondly, in both groups of countries, organic farming and public debt were significant; nevertheless, differences were observed for genuine savings and employment, for which the peculiarities of economic activities seemed to be materialized as different influences upon environmental wellbeing. Our study draws alarm signals regarding the development patterns applied in the EU, seeming to have results that strengthen the sustainable goals, but not sufficient for exceeding the traditional growth-oriented model.

Digital literacy is among the mandatory abilities to any higher education level and represents a fundamental ingredient in successful professionalization. Considering the deep penetration of digital technologies in everyday life, digital literacy offers a set of transversal skills that could improve a whole area of activities, from banking operations to civic participation. However, these skills are diverse and vary according to the development of technologies and society. This study fills an important academic gap on digital literacy by placing it in a specific and well-defined context, analyzing different perspectives that involve such learning, such as predictors of digital literacy in different types of students. In addition, research increases its importance as it is being developed during the pandemic, a period characterized by accelerated technological use and sudden changes. This research used a quantitative design based on the answers to a questionnaire conducted from March 2021 to May 2021. From a methodological perspective, we tested several hypotheses using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) within the structural equation model (SEM). The results show that communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, and technical digital skills are more present in the case of students enrolled in economics and social sciences, while other digital skills (i.e., creativity and information) are more prevalent in the case of humanities students. Moreover, the results showed that, except for creativity and problem-solving-related digital skills, all of the digital skills were significantly influenced by students’ different levels of education.

Sustainability especially targets the process of reconciliation and balance among specific tendencies occurring in its economic, human, and environmental dimensions. This study intends to reveal if salient differences between the levels of each dimension are present across a punctual national context, i.e. the Romanian one, in the 2006-2020 period. It also intends to investigate the effects of economic and social sectors on the main weak points of environmental wellbeing, if these are still significant and negative or, contrary, if sustainable path could be found in these links in the same circumstances of analysis. In this way, we centered our debate on environmental performance, found its main vulnerabilities for observing, on one hand, if Romania follows different environmental paths comparatively with the other two dimensions of wellbeing and, on the other hand, the nature of the effects of society's performance (with its economic and social parts) upon it. Particularly, our study aims to respond to a practical need of research in this country, being also possible to represent a support for the policies addressing sustainable development in the Romanian context. Based on descriptive and path analyses, our results showed that, in the case of environmental wellbeing, the most vulnerable indicators are shown to be the ones regarding renewable energy and energy savings. The main susceptibilities in Romania seemed to be in respect to the relationship between (1) energy savings and safe sanitation, healthy life, population growth, public debt, employment and (2) renewable energy and healthy life, population growth, public debt. Accordingly, the two most sensitive environmental indicators were shown to be affected by these human and economic components of wellbeing, recommendations being formulated in the directions of more careful strategical actions for their improvement in such a way of not highly contributing to the degradation of the environment.