No abstract

This study is set out to identify feasible ways for immigrants’ integration into the major ten host countries within the European Union (EU-10) and increased labor market performance. Eurostat, OECD, and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) official data was mainly used to capture essential international migration indicators (for both dimensions—economic and humanitarian), along with education, socio-economic development and labor market credentials, as key variables for immigrants’ integration into EU-10, compiled for 2000–2017. In this respect, spatial analyses, bootstrap estimations, structural equations (SEM), and Gaussian graphical models (GGM) are applied, to better grasp migrants’ labor market outcomes. Significant positive consequences reflected through a reduction in the unemployment rate of the foreign population are generated by active labor market policies, jointly with an enhancement in the attainment for secondary education, and welfare advances. The opposite, a rise in income inequalities has negative effects, while additional support for R&D activities deployed within the business sector is required to entail migrants’ labor market performance. The passive policies need to be redesigned and tailored to significantly downsize the foreign unemployment, since these are currently acting like a disincentive for an active participation of migrants on the European labor market, thus confining their integration.

In this article we assess credit rationing across European countries by analyzing the impact of banking competition on the access to finance of firms. The importance of the financial sector in promoting the sustainable economy is recognized by the European Union, that has taken the lead in efforts to build a financial system that supports sustainable growth. However, it should be acknowledged that in highly competitive business environments, it is not easy to challenge the existing paradigms, since companies need to be profitable in addition to improving their environmental performance. Using data from European firms Survey on the Access to Finance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), our results, using Probit regression, support the Market Power Hypothesis, outlining that more concentrated banking markets are characterized by higher levels of credit rationing. Also, our results reveal that small firms are more credit rationed compared to large firms. The analysis shows that financial constraints are stronger in the countries more affected by the financial crisis.

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The research objective was to demonstrate the economic impact of using, in afforestation, forest reproductive materials (FRMs) obtained from seed trees selected in the most valuable Norway spruce populations of the FGRs’ (forest genetic resources’) category. The values obtained for the main growth traits (diameter at breast height (Dbh), tree height (Th), and tree volume (Tv)), both in the FGR and in the closest population (with the same age and growth in similar environmental conditions), were compared. Three comparative trials were analyzed, each belonging to different breeding levels: Open-pollinated (Breţcu, 40 years old), half-sib (Măneciu, 25 years), and full-sib (Comandău, 23 years). The difference in volume/hectare between the FGR and an unimproved neighbor population was economically quantified (€), based on the average price per cubic meter (m3) of spruce wood in Romania; the profit at the end of the rotation period (110 years) was projected taking into account the genetic gain that will result from the use of FRM collected from the FGRs. The average FGR growth results were superior to the unimproved neighbor populations, with 8%–13%, 14%–25%, and 26%–79% for Dbh, Th, and volume/ha, respectively, and the differences increased if the best 10% seed trees of the trials were used. For Th, a five times higher family mean heritability was registered for the pendula trees (compared to pyramidalis) in the half-sib trial, while in the full-sib experiment, the pendula trees (both full and half pendula) again registered higher heritability, but for Dbh, which recommends the pendula selection for different traits in the two trials. These results have led to a rate of profitability between 540 and 3366 €/ha, a value that is predicted to increase until the end of the rotation period, when the genetic gain could generate a profit of 7560 €/ha.