Based on data collected for 398 communes from the North-West development region of Romania between 2007 and 2014, this article presents a local economic development (LED) index for rural communities and identifies the main factors which influence LED in these communities. Our results show that exogenous factors, such as location in the influence area of urban communities and the existence of a direct connection to the European Road Network, influence the level of LED. At the same time nor the aforementioned exogenous factors nor other exogenous factors, such as non-refundable investments programs in local core infrastructure (financed by the European Union and the Romanian Government) which were designed to accelerate/spur economic development, as well as direct connections to the National Roads Network, do not have any statistically significant influence on spurring/accelerating LED (at least in this short period of time).

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Abstract:As public institutions are faced with more diverse and increased community needs, significant concern arises (both in academia and practice) for the d windling resources available at the local level and the factors which can influence local revenue mobilization. Using data for 3,227 Romanian territorial-administrative (all Romanian territorial administrative units except Bucharest -the capital city), this research compares local revenue mobilization (calculated as: effectively collected revenues, as a share of what was predicted at the beginning of the budgetary year) for the 2008 -2011 period, trying to determine if the type of a territorial administrative unit influences its public revenue mobilization. The post hoc ANOVA showed that the type of a local institution (be it commune, city, municipality, county or sector) does not affect the level of revenue collection (proxied by collected/predicted revenues); where such relationships between these two variables were found, they were rather spurious and did not surfaced across the entire dataset.

During professional practice stages students use the skills and knowledge previously acquired via formal classes, create networks, find mentors, enter into contact with citizens and their problems and obtain much needed professional experience, while simultaneously improving their theoretical knowledge and skills as a result of working side by side with practitioners in host organizations. As such, the main goal of this paper is to provide a general overview of professional practice in Romanian public administration education by looking at the undergraduate students' satisfaction regarding the practicum stage in different host institutions. The data (N = 89) collected from undergraduate students in a public administration program allows us to explore: their satisfaction with different aspects of professional practice (ranging from resources to new knowledge acquired), the strengths and weaknesses of practicum, the perceived utility of such activities and potential improvement measures. Going further than a simple descriptive analysis, our data also shows that the perceived benefits of professional practice can be reduced to two latent classes of utilities/benefits: those related to the new skills and knowledge acquired and the interactions with practitioners and citizens.

AbstractThe current research explores the influence of multiple factors (such as class attendance, previous academic performance, in-class involvement and attention, class schedule, gender and other control variables) on the academic performance of public-administration undergraduate students. The regression models developed based on the academic literature were tested on a sample of 1st-year students (N = 115) enrolled in the Public Administration bachelor program of Babeș-Bolyai University (Cluj-Napoca) in order to explain their performance (grade) in a final examination. Since none of the variables included in the model are self-reported (i.e. classic self-administered questionnaires) we have reduced the potential that social desirability bias could influence our results, thus strengthening the reliability and robustness of our findings.Our results show that the main factors which can influence students’ academic performance are attendance at seminars and in-class involvement. All other factors which were included in the regression model (age, gender, distance between class site and their home, residence in urban or rural environment, attention and motivation, class schedule and four proxies / measures for previous performance) were either not statistically significant in any of the models or showed an inconsistent / unstable influence on academic performance.These results can be of interest not only for Public Administration scholars, but also for university decision makers. As such, starting from the aforementioned findings and the literature, we also propose and discuss specific measures, which can be adopted by faculty-level decision makers in order to help students improve their academic performance and ensure better educational outcomes, especially in regard to the admission criteria currently in place.Points for practitionersThe research investigates, among other potential factors, whether class attendance influences performance regardless of other individual characteristics. In doing so, the research tries to provide an answer to the ongoing debate on the usefulness of compulsory attendance at lectures and seminars in higher education. Furthermore, by observing the influence of previous performance (during high school) on current academic performance, the research can identify more adequate admission criteria, which can be used by university decision makers to ensure a better selection of candidates, thus potentially decreasing dropout rates.