Andreea-Oana Iacobuta

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University

Are people more likely to be satisfied with their lives if they had freedom from regulations, if they had the ability to trade freely internationally? In light of the demographic aging phenomenon we are facing, the present study analyzes the relationship between economic freedom and life satisfaction among European older adults. In order to do so,...

Crises, such as the current pandemic, and the measures meant to tackle with them tend to increase the presence of the informal sector in the official economy, affecting mostly the emerging and developing economies. This situation is characteristic for the eleven CEE countries. These also display certain weaknesses at the economic and institutional...

In the global context generated by the 2008-2009 economic crisis and by the current COVID-19 pan­demic, the analysis of the way in which territories can resist, return and adapt to shocks has become a priority for resilience-based policies. The paper aims to investigate the role of institutions in economic re­silience, in the particular case of Cen...

Given the current context, with phenomena such as dramatic climate change, water, air, soil pollution, etc., the complex relation between environmental degradation and economic growth is intensely debated in the academia as well as in worldwide politics. This study examines the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions, gross domestic product,...

Informal or shadow economy and its multiple determinants have gained the attention of economic research, benefitting from a vast body of literature in the field. Even so, the nexus between the expansion of the informal economic sector and institutions, perceived as good practices, has been less explored. If the formal institutional component is eas...

Sustainable economic growth assumes interdependencies among social, economic, and environmental dimensions of growth. For Romania, in particular, the sustainable economic growth is both a challenge and an opportunity for prosperity. This paper aims at assessing the sustainability of economic growth in Romania in the period 1995-2019 by identifying...

This paper takes a free-market approach to the idea of welfare. That is, the analysis does not reject the role of the welfare state to fight against poverty and inequality but underlines the perils of the welfare mentality’s proliferation. Sustainable development requires more individual responsibility and less dependence on the state and its redis...

The relationship between institutional quality and sustainable development?; in all its three connected dimensions - economic, social, environmental - is widely discussed at the decision making level and in the specialized literature, with some contradictory opinions among researchers. This paper aims at investigating the relationship between insti...

Over the last decades, youth unemployment has attracted serious attention of the public, politicians and researchers of social phenomena. Economic and sociological literature of the past 20-30 years abounds in studies aiming at clarifying the causes of this phenomenon. Statistical data show that youth unemployment rate is twice or even three times...

This paper discusses whether the social dependency mentality in Romania is a consequence of path (past) dependence (that is, the country’s cultural and historical inheritance), or of the failure of social protection policies implemented after 1990. By taking a deductive approach and using data from Eurobarometers and several international databases...

A growing literature coming from economics, sociology or psychology explores the wide range of variables that might explain voluntary compliance behaviour. The aim of this paper is to identify the institutional factors associated with tax morale and to highlight the resemblances and the differences among several countries across the world, grouped...

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that influence the creation of new businesses and to point out both the differences and the similarities existing between countries and groups of countries in terms of these influencing factors. We are mainly interested in the place Romania and Bulgaria have among the countries of the world from...

The ideological debate on public government involvement in environmental issue is ever-topical as resource exploitation affects the quality of the natural environment. Considering the two issues involved in the analysis of externalities, social welfare and property rights, we intend in this paper to develop on the problems related to the implicatio...

This paper investigates the relationship between the state failure and institutional quality and path dependence in post-communist world using a sample of 25 countries. Cluster analysis, principal components analysis and econometric modelling are used as research methods in order to show that within the perimeter of the analysed sample, the state f...

The research aims at identifying the presence of significant differences in the assessment of the audit report content among the financial auditors and different categories of users of audited financial-accounting information from Romania and Spain. In order to attain the research objective, a study based on the method of quantitative research has...

The goal of this paper is to present and analyse the evolution and the results of property transformation process in Central and Eastern European countries, a process imposed by the differences in productivity between public and private property during the planned economic system. We aim at providing an overview of the main aspects related to the p...

The aim of this paper is to identify the institutional factors that determine shadow economy European Union level and to group the member states into clusters using shadow economy and the institutional factors as variables. Shadow economy, a serious enemy of economic development, with unknown dimensions and unpredicted evolution, does not develop i...

Agglomeration economies are defined as the external benefits that economic actors can obtain by being located near other firms, workers and consumers. This paper aims to show that there is a causal relationship between the features of local culture and entrepreneurship, resulting in a positive effect, which leads to agglomeration economies. The cul...

This paper aims to analyse several inequalities in the Romanian healthcare system at regional level and to highlight the resemblances and the differences, taking into account the socio-economic development, the population health status and the material and human resources allocated to healthcare, in different Romanian regions. We use secondary data...

This article aims at providing an assessment of access and quality of healthcare in EU countries from a bottom up perspective and to investigate the relationship between several macroeconomic indicators related to public expenditure on health and institutional context and people’ evaluations at microeconomic level. The results show significant diff...

This paper starts from the premise that there is a strong relationship between individual values and human development. In other words, the values we embrace act as facilitating factors or, on the contrary, as barrier for our personal development. Data from World Values Survey database and from Sustainable Society Foundation are used, the purpose b...

The phenomenology of crisis is one of the most complex tasks that economics undertook and undertakes to discern. Crisis is not a new phenomenon. As a cycle sequence, either long or short, it entered the "normality" of the economic dynamics. The big ones, like the one in '29-'33 and the current one, escape this register. Their width, development and...

Ronald Coase article from 1937, The Nature of the Firm, meant a new way of thinking and conceiving of the world, especially of economic organisations. Coase argued that the firm and the market represent two alternative ways to organise the same transactio

Starting from the results of a national survey, a questionnaire on the values of Romanians was applied in April 2008 which was used for a comparative analysis of historical regions of Romania: Moldova, Bucharest, Dobrogea, Transilvania and Muntenia.

Majority of the economic literature acknowledge the fact that the ability of a country to follow sustainable development paths largely depends on the quality of its institutional structures. In other words, efficient institutions are essential to achieving sustainable development. This paper aims at analyzing the relationship between institutions a...

It is almost unanimously accepted that research and development, innovation and knowledge creation play a major role in regional competitiveness and, furthermore, they largely contribute to progress and economic growth. Although there is not a unique definition and perspective, the concept of learning region is strongly related to the one of region...

Launched on institutional channel by George Tintner and Armen Alchian, the principle according to which the competitive environment is the one which operates the selection forcing individuals to behave rationally was and remained a subject of methodological disputes. Once in the market, the economic agents have only one alternative: in order to man...

In new institutionalists’ analysis, the transaction costs are essential in explaining the origin of private property; however, this aspect is not that obvious in old institutionalists’ works. But even if they did not emphasize on this issue, they created a theoretical-explanatory background used and enriched with logical arguments and numerous exam...

This article aims at analyzing the similar viewpoints between the Austrian approaches of institutions and what we call today (new)institutional economics. We assume the hypothesis that when it comes to the emergence and evolution of institutions, the Austrian School has inspired, explicitly or not, the recent contributions in this area. We focus mo...