Ana-Maria Zamfir

• PhD
• Head of Department at National Research Institute for Labour and Social Protection

The paper presents the most comprehensive and large-scale global study to date on how higher education students perceived the use of ChatGPT in early 2024. With a sample of 23,218 students from 109 countries and territories, the study reveals that students primarily used ChatGPT for brainstorming, summarizing texts, and finding research articles, w...

The strategies and concepts specific to circular economy create new jobs or transform the existing ones. Our study aims to investigate the implications of the circular economy on the labor market. Essentially, our goal is to study the characteristics of circular jobs and to reveal the skills required to perform these jobs in different sectors of Eu...

The coronavirus pandemic has caused unprecedented disruption to various sectors of the social systems around the world. The young population has faced important challenges not only in education, but also in their economic situation. The transition to online education, as well as the reduction of the workforce, changed the lives of young people in a...

This article studies educational decisions, focusing on intentions of enrolment in master’s education of STEM bachelor students. Integrating human capital theory with concepts of cultural and social capital, we propose a two-level model for the choice of pursuing master’s degrees. First level (individual) includes factors covering individual habitu...

Trauma scientists have raised the alarm about the devastating consequences of the Ukraine war on mental health. We examined how higher education students—as indirect victims—coped with this conflict and how they emotionally reacted during 2022. We involved 2314 students from 16 countries through an online survey. A structural equation model indicat...

Education is a complex system with implications for educational policy and management. Education systems that are more comprehensive generate more equal outcomes, fostering access to opportunities for all children. On the other hand, systems with early selection and tracking are more stratified and register higher inequalities in educational outcom...

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically contributed to the change of the educational process. In higher education, teaching and pedagogy, evaluation, as well as experiences of students and teachers have changed profoundly from the beginning of the pandemic to the present. The educational process shifted from face-to-face interactions to online distan...

Understanding human behavior in the decision-making process represents a challenge for researchers in the socio-economic field. The complexity comes from multiple criteria acting simultaneously. Hiring decisions are made on a set of criteria representing the attributes of the applicants. This study’s main objective is to investigate Romanian employ...

Education is one of the most important drivers for development and wellbeing both at the level of the society and at an individual level. Recognising the key role of education for social development, economic growth and individual wellbeing, education expansion has become an important objective for educational systems across the world. Education in...

Skills needed in jobs and skills mismatches are important topics for research and policy in the field of economic development and the labour market. Understanding skill needs is essential for improving education and training policies, as labour markets experience dynamic transformation driven by rapid technological progress and increased complexity...

Young people have to be provided with opportunities to access prosperous, resilient and fulfilling lives. Investing in education and skills is considered one of the most important ways to support young people’s well-being and to enable them to enjoy good career prospects. Using the framework of human capital theory, we explored the role of educatio...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a wide range of negative consequences for higher education students. We explored the generalizability of the control-value theory of achievement emotions for e-learning, focusing on their antecedents. We involved 17019 higher education students from 13 countries, who completed an online survey during th...

Education can be seen as an investment that brings higher incomes to individuals. People with higher levels of education collect important earnings premium in the labour market. On the other hand, the expansion of education is a major trend that characterizes evolution of societies, with important positive effects at the level of social and economi...

In contemporary societies, education facilitates social mobility and well-being of individuals. According to human capital theory, people who invest in themselves through education and training have improved chances of getting better jobs and gaining higher income (Becker et al., 1990; Woodhall, 1987). This paper aims to examine the effects of educ...

The relation between firms’ social responsibility and financial performances is still a matter of debate in the scientific literature. The empirical research has produced heterogeneous results, and many methodological limitations related to indicators measurement, sample design, endogeneity of the management decisions, or lack of control variables...

Students’ commitment and engagement in the educational process are shaped by a dense combination of factors, with effects on educational attainment and on the length of their educational careers. Decisions of prolonging education by enrolling in master’s degrees are beneficial for both individuals and societies, as such programs provide higher leve...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shaped higher education and seen the distinct rise of e-learning as a compulsory element of the modern educational landscape. Accordingly, this study highlights the factors which have influenced how students perceive their academic performance during this emergency changeover to e-learning. The...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shaped higher education and seen the distinct rise of e-learning as a compulsory element of the modern educational landscape. Accordingly, this study highlights the factors which have influenced how students perceive their academic performance during this emergency changeover to e-learning. The...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shaped higher education and seen the distinct rise of e-learning as a compulsory element of the modern educational landscape. Accordingly, this study highlights the factors which have influenced how students perceive their academic performance during this emergency changeover to e-learning. The...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shaped higher education and seen the distinct rise of e-learning as a compulsory element of the modern educational landscape. Accordingly, this study highlights the factors which have influenced how students perceive their academic performance during this emergency changeover to e-learning. The...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shaped higher education and seen the distinct rise of e-learning as a compulsory element of the modern educational landscape. Accordingly, this study highlights the factors which have influenced how students perceive their academic performance during this emergency changeover to e-learning. The...

Like other postmodern structures, post-industrial labour markets display more frequent and rapid changes and higher unpredictability. In these conditions, the world of work is less capable in providing individuals stable signals for the construction of their behaviours. This paper aims to examine both macro and micro factors that shape labour marke...

This foresight study will explores the evolution of the labor market during the next 10 years concerning innovation management (according to the job classification of innovation management), knowledge production and knowledge transfer promoters, as we name them. The study reviews future trends and evolutions at global level and provides a more deta...

Coronavirus pandemic has affected millions of participants to education around the globe. School closure has been in the core of the preventive measures taken by authorities in order to limit COVID-19 spread. Resilience of the education systems in front of coronavirus crisis has relied on their capacity to continue education after the school closur...

Perceived academic self-efficacy represents an important component of students’ mental health and well-being. The link between efficacy beliefs and level of academic performances relies on the fact that they regulate the anxiety and foster motivation, school engagement, effort, and perseverance of students. This paper aims to identify factors that...

Innovation and knowledge-intensive economy are considered crucial for addressing challenges and opportunities currently faced by Europe. The present paper aims to provide inputs for building a long-term vision aiming to promote innovation and knowledge economy for fostering smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. We analyze microdata from the 2016...

Coronavirus pandemic has affected millions of workers and companies around the world. Movement of people has been restricted nationwide or in limited areas. Social distancing measures have impacted labour markets in a great extent as numerous sectors and economic activities have been temporally closed or restricted. Developed and emergent economies...

Sustainable innovation at a company level drives economic, environmental and social improvement at a national level. Recent evidence has shown that businesses have increased the managerial attention and investments dedicated to sustainability. This paper aims to identify the most important drivers supporting companies to develop innovation activiti...

Research and development activities are one of the main drivers for progress, economic growth and wellbeing in many societies. This article proposes a text mining approach applied to a large amount of data extracted from job vacancies advertisements, aiming to shed light on the main skills and demands that characterize first stage research position...

Innovation is essential for European competitiveness and provides key inputs for developing business models that are conducive for a more sustainable economy. Recent evidences show that businesses have increased the management attention and investments they’re dedicating to sustainability. This paper aims to identify the most important drivers supp...

Education is a central social institution supporting human capital development and socialisation of youth to adulthood. From this point of view, the passage of individuals through the education system is an important theme of study for social sciences, both for explaining educational attainment, as well as for understanding subsequent outcomes obta...

In economics, the concept of resilience illustrates the adaptability capacity of a system after an external shock. The goal of the empirical analysis presented in this paper is to investigate the labor market resilience of Romanian Counties relative to the economic crisis whose negative effects occurred since 2009. The counties are compared in term...

Education is a key factor that can contribute to the economic growth, supporting the social mobility and the living standard improvement. Both from the scientific point of view, as well as from the policy making process point of view, it is essential to know how individuals choose their educational path, in order to understand what is and can be th...

Resilience represents the ability of systems and individuals to adapt and overcome the difficulties and challenges they face. Resilient entrepreneurs are those who cope with stressful or adverse situations by relying on both internal and external factors. This article examines the way higher education graduates express entrepreneurial resilience in...

While there is a rich literature on the school-to-work transition in developed countries, an equally robust literature is lacking for post-communist countries. We analyse the patterns of labour market entry of higher education graduates in several formerly communist countries by drawing on the HEGESCO data set, which provides information on the sch...

While targeting waste reduction and maintaining the value of products and resources in the system as much as possible, undertaking circular economy practices at the company level is a way of achieving entrepreneurial sustainability. This paper explores entrepreneurial decision models for adopting circular economy practices, focusing on European SME...

For many years, gender equality has been on the agenda of various stakeholders from different sectors of activity and from different levels of action. However, information regarding the participation of women to research and development remains scarce and insufficient for assessing the progress towards equality related goals in this area. This pape...

YOUTH MOBILITY FOR STUDY – FIRST STEP TOWARDS MIGRATION FOR WORK A.M. Zamfir, M. Velciu, L. Grecu National Scientific Research Institute for Labour and Social Protection (ROMANIA) Student migration is an increasing phenomenon, right at the border between mobility and circular migration, as a temporary and usually repetitive movement of a young ci...

In the recent period, social inequalities have become a research topic of great interest for many scientists in the world. The participation of individuals to education is an important determinant for their access to subsequent opportunities, especially labor market opportunities. Moreover, an important number of studies show that education is one...

This paper aims to analyze the influence of skills proficiency on wages in two European countries with mature economies and labour markets: Germany and UK. Our results highlight the need to study the importance of skills for assessing private returns of human capital development. The analysis is based on data provided by the Survey of Adult Skills...

Improving the matching in between educational curricula and labour market demands is one of the Recommendations formulated for Romania in 2013 by the European Commission with respect to the reform of higher education system. Why do we need an increasing education-job match? Theoretical background points to increasing career perspectives, increasing...

The analysis developed in this paper aims to identify the factors with positive influence and those with a negative impact on gross earnings for higher education graduates. The investigation is based on a dataset, obtained as a result of the surveys conducted in the HEGESCO (Higher Education as a Generator of Strategic Competences) project. We perf...

Our paper explores the patterns of occupational mobility using a theoretical framework which integrates elements from job matching and human capital theories. We employ a network analysis approach and consider occupations as nodes and flows of individuals moving from one occupation to another as links. By testing a gravity model on data containing...

The aim of this paper is to identify patterns on vocational specificity in 17 EU countries with respect to their higher education systems. We merged two databases that evaluate the labour market entry of ISCED5 graduates, 4-5 years after their graduation: REFLEX and HEGESCO and we employ multiple correspondence analysis on 4 variables: country, the...

Our paper explores the way in which the education-job mismatches impacts the working benefits of higher education graduates. In order to estimate the “wage penalty”, we analyse REFLEX data set, which includes information on early career outcomes of school leavers graduating ISCED 5 in 1999/2000. The survey was carried out in 2005 among higher gradu...

We explore the early career mobility of the Romanian higher education graduates using the network analysis approach. The nodes are represented by occupations (3 digits groups according to ISCO 88), while the links represent movements of individuals from one job to another. A job change is defined as an experience of inter-organisational mobility. T...

The article investigates the properties of the occupational mobility network (OMN) in 12 EU countries. Using REFLEX database we construct for each country an empirical OMN that reflects the job movements of the university graduates, during the first five years after graduation (1999 - 2005). The nodes are represented by the occupations coded at 3 d...

Although there is a rich literature on the rate of occupational mobility, there are important gaps in understanding patterns of movement among occupations. We employ a network based approach to explore occupational mobility of the Romanian university graduates in the first years after graduation (2003 - 2008). We use survey data on their career mob...

This paper aims to explain the return migration decision of educated Romanian migrants and find out whether they hold some characteristics which differentiate them from other Romanian migrants who are decided not to return to their home country. We build our analysis on data from an on-line survey among 589 of Romanian migrants with medium and high...

We explore the profile of the Romanian companies that had invested in R&D during 2004 - 2007 by applying a standard logistic model on micro data collected from small, medium and large firms. Our findings show that the main determinants of the investments in research and development are firm size and location, sector, type of products, investment in...