Nowadays, interest in corporate environmental strategies shifts from cleaner processes to the holistic nature of green products. The relevant literature argues that firms have the opportunity to pioneer through green product innovation, allowing them to differentiate and thus gain competitive advantage. Environmental burden of products during their entire life cycle is undeniable. Due to the weakness of the existing literature that inadequately addresses a commonly accepted green product definition, as well as the thereby caused inconclusive academic empirical results on firms' competitiveness, there are many cases of businesses greenwashing behavior. The overall contribution of this exploratory paper, on determining and evaluating the degree of greenness of a product, is twofold; first, starting with a systematic literature review, authors further contribute by proposing an integrative definition that addresses the so far existing terminological gap. Next, after reviewing the existing environmental assessment tools, authors based on the developed definition and in accordance to its dynamic dimension contribute to the existing methodology, as the paper reveals issues that need to be considered in the evaluation of green products.

In spite of economic growth, which led to the creation of millions of new jobs, income inequality has been growing sharply in most parts of the world. There is no doubt that inequality of income is the single greatest threat to social stability throughout the world. Development of technologies contributes to the increase of labour productivity, replacement of job positions by robots and automatic machines, which can further exacerbate social inequality. The aim of this paper is to determine how changes in technology affect the inequality of income in European countries. Based on the econometric apparatus, two periods are investigated: the first one, from 2006 to 2017 and the second one, from 2010 to 2017, that characterizes a new economic era after the global financial crisis. All countries were clustered, which made it possible to generalize their social and technological development. The novelty is that we considered the dichotomy and cointegration of two economic categories -income inequality and technological changes. Using a model that features biased heterogeneity, factor proportions, and labour market frictions, we obtained four quite sufficient results. (1) Central European countries and the UK have reached such a level of development and redistribution in the economy that a change in labour productivity is not significantly associated with any deepening of inequality in incomes. (2) Periphery countries, due to their significant dependence on larger economies and lack of

Standard growth theory emphasizes the closure of gaps: as internationalization proceeds, socioeconomic, structural characteristics of different countries become similar. Despite the fact that the European Union (EU) represents a historical experiment of a region of gradually strengthening internationalization, a wide range of EU studies reject the convergence hypothesis, showing an unclear development of standard deviation in time. Many of the studies find that something went wrong in the 1980s, yet they describe it as the result of a temporary effect. In the present paper, we show that the puzzle of the 1980s is not a short-term break in a continuous trend, but a complete alteration of the process, a structural shift toward a persisting period of continuous divergence! The previous trend of closing the gap among the member countries was reversed completely: in 2010, the coefficient of variation returned to higher levels than those of 1960. Second, all previous gains of labor vanished: in the period 1980-2005, real wages lost about 35 percent against per capita gross domestic product (GDP). The empirical findings we provide support our main suspicion: apart from confirming the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) observation of growing and persisting inequality in all Western economies, the gradual transition of the European free trade area into an economic and monetary union, accompanied by the prevalence of a specific policy, explains the prevalence of a period of deepening divergence since the beginning of the 1980s.

The present paper is an empirical exercise that contributes to the debate on whether long-lasting cyclical economic development can be viewed as a deterministic phenomenon or a stochastic process. First, we search for longer lasting, periodically reappearing cycles of GDP per capita in four countries: USA, UK, Germany and France. Second, based on theoretical arguments that stress applied knowledge as a significant driving force, we test its dynamic interrelationship with these countries' economic performance by applying spectral and cross-spectral methodologies. We confirm the existence of periodical long waves both in terms of GDP per capita as well as of applied knowledge. Moreover, we find strong interrelations between them and modest evidence for which is the leading force in the long term.

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In our paper "Feraios Revised: Inter-Regional Trans-National Socioeconomic Cooperation in South and Eastern Europe", published in International Relations and Diplomacy Journal (December 2014), we analyzed the prospects of an inter-regional cross-national cooperation (in economic, social and political patterns) in South and Eastern Europe through the structural reorganization of the existing institutions (local, national or cross-national) in the area and we expressed the need for the reintroduction of Rigas Feraios" perspective of socioeconomic and ultimately of political integration in this region. The present paper is an attempt to explain the reasons why working on the regional socioeconomic cooperation and integration constitutes a necessary condition before going into a wider amalgamation. Contemporary systemic, global crisis brought out internal and transnational aberrations and the fact of the asymmetrical financial integration of the EU countries. The Union consists of a multilevel system were social conflicts, different rates of economic development and various demographic dynamics dominate. The increasing territorial inequalities in the enlarged Europe and the "suspended step" of a monetary unification might establish the need to revert to regional socioeconomic cooperation, on the basis of the existing cultural, economic and historical bonds, like those of South-East Europe and the Black Sea, for restarting European integration and succeed interunion stability and prosperity.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the distribution of labor market experience among the unemployed in a less developed area in Greece (the north‐western region of Epirus), where unemployment has severe detrimental repercussions on the local workforce.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses a dataset, obtained through purpose built questionnaires used to assist the local authority in carrying out a regional, pilot, active labor market policy project financed by the European Commission and the Greek Government.FindingsAn ordinary least square regression was applied correcting for incidental truncation, in order to show that the duration of the prior unemployment spell negatively affects the duration of the current employment spell and vice versa, which highlights the phenomenon of an “unemployment trap”. Furthermore, those personal and socioeconomic characteristics which are responsible for causing jobless individuals to be “trapped” in the unemployment state are identified. Workers aged above 45, women, employees in sales and other service occupations, face significantly shorter complete spells of employment, along with longer duration of unemployment, hence suffering from self‐reinforcing unemployment.Originality/valueThe results show that a “scarring effect” appears to be in operation, as the duration of prior unemployment spell has deleterious effects on the duration of the subsequent employment and vice versa. This evidence provides additional insights for policymakers, who design measures for individuals vulnerable to unemployment in the less developed regions of the European Union.

Standard growth theory considers a constant, endogenously defined rate of technological change that generates a log-linear evolution of economic activity. Yet, the persistent current phase of worldwide slowdown triggers the awakening of "long waves" theories. In the present paper, starting from a dynamically evolving synergy of Romer's "fishing out" and "standing on shoulders" effects, we end up having three mechanisms that provoke a cyclical evolution of applied ideas: a direct impact through applied research's productivity; an effect through researcher's effort allocation; and an effect through the allocation of labour force. Putting these together, we initiate long waves of per capita (p.c.) output.