Lucian Belascu

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu · Department of Management Marketing & Business Administration

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the nexus between economic growth and environmental degradation, with a specific focus on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. It leverages a dataset spanning from 1991 to 2021, encompassing all 12 member nations of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The investigation includes a wide array of sta...

Supply chain management is changing rapidly due to increasing complexity, uncertain demand, and the requirement for sustainable methods. Advanced technologies like Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory networks (BiLSTM) and Convolutional Neural Networks can enhance supply chain processes. This paper propose integration of convolutional neural networ...

This study examines the intricate relationship between economic growth and environmental deg-radation in Europe via the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Our results contest the traditional inverted U-shape model of the Environmental Kuznets Curve, indicating that the theory may not be consistently applicable across European countries. Utilizing C...

Considering the actual climate challenges, pollution should be reduced in Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) from the European Union (EU). The main objective of this paper is to assess the impact of energy poverty and renewable energy consumption (REC) on pollution in 10 CEE countries, EU member states, during 2005–2022. The results bas...

We investigate the relationship between financial development and environmental quality during 1996-2019 in a panel analysis of 40 European countries, of which 28 EU and 12 non-EU member countries. We built four empirical models to check the connection between financial development and environmental degradation while controlling for GDP growth, tra...

This paper investigates the financial impact of corporate sustainability greenwashing in the global Technology sector. Using environmental, social and governance (ESG) controversy data spanning between 2014 and 2021, we examine how media-reported conflicts linking companies to dubious sustainability claims influence financing costs. Models estimate...

The primary objective of this study is to uncover and examine the patterns of scientific collaboration within the domain of tax evasion and tax avoidance spanning the years 1975 to 2022. To analyze the dissemination of knowledge on a worldwide scale, we investigated the interconnections among authors, journals, countries, and institutions. A total...

This paper focuses on the oil and gas sector because of its direct exposure to the complete range of ESG challenges, as well as strong pressure to change business models due to the energy transition. We investigate the ESG scores of a sample of global companies in this sector and their relationship to stock market performance and to the ESG intensi...

Even though the literature implies that customers and banking organizations can profit from digital banking in various ways, client adoption of this service is still low, especially in emerging and developing nations. Consumers’ openness to digital services limits their willingness to adopt digital banking, especially mobile banking services. We us...

Addressing the intricate associations between green energy adoption, natural resources, economic globalization, and environmental taxes is central to this study of Europe's ecological sustainability. We use cutting-edge techniques to investigate the varying impacts of green energy use, economic globalization, and environmental taxation, as well as...

This research investigates the evolving nexus between sustainability practices and firm market value, with a specific focus on the rapidly growing Fintech sector. As concerns about environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues continue to gain prominence, understanding the implications of sustainability efforts on firm performance becomes cruc...

Programmatic advertising rose in the early 2000s, aiming at streamlining the online media buying process. It offered marketers the means to buy millions of advertising impressions instantly and helped publishers increase their revenues. The deployment of automated algorithms for media trading led to a significant decrease in campaign setup and mana...

Our paper proposes the machine learning Random Forest algorithm for classifying economic activity within the European Union, building on the relevance of a reduced set of variables alongside location and industry of origin for the differences in performance between foreign versus locally-owned companies. We find a diverse landscape of business perf...

With VAT being one of (if not the) largest contributors to country budgets, many Governments are preoccupied with maximising VAT collections. However, a simplistic view of increasing the VAT rate is not appropriate, as research shows there is inverse relationship between marginal collections and marginal VAT rates. Instead, as results in this Gener...

Eastern European societies and their economies have experienced specific and/or asymmetrical developments over the last 70 years. The political regime changes at the end of the 80s led these countries on the path of market economy and opened the doors for foreign investors’ presence, as privatizations of previously state-owned companies were consid...

Countries with a higher proportion of tertiary education graduates are wealthier and offer more diverse and motivating career opportunities to individuals, including students. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have examined the impact of education on wages and economic development and the impact of R&D and innovation on economic and...

In this study, we examine the contribution of nuclear, fossil (coal, oil, and gas), and renewable (hydro, solar, wind, biofuel) electricity sources to pollution in the globalization era, as measured by total greenhouse gases (GHG) produced by electricity per capita. We conduct an empirical investigation in a global panel of 163 countries which asse...

Ever since the Global Financial Crisis, the financial system has seen an accelerated level of innovation. Bitcoin offered a decentralized alternative to money, with thousands of other cryptoassets quickly emerging. Most recently, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) promises to offer a new digital economy, with smart contracts replacing the need for financ...

The modern economy has faced, over time, several economic crises. They have determined changes in the behaviour of economic agents and a natural evolution towards the current entrepreneurial environment, taking into account the structural, quantitative, and qualitative dynamics of economic activity, general economic development goals, and technolog...

The paper explores the relationship between education, digitalization, and financial development between 1996 and 2019 with the aim of showcasing the differences between developed and emerging economies in Europe. We use a Bayesian VAR framework that includes variables related to education, digitalization, and financial development, as well as seve...

Amid financial crises, the risk of losing money from the investing activity is higher due to the volatility of the market, and unpredictable movements of the prices. Thus, methods for risk measurement such as Value at risk and expected shortfall, help investors and fund managers to prepare for the potential losses and hedge accordingly. This paper...

The paper explores the long versus short-term attributes of the airline industry exposure to oil price risk in a macroeconomic framework that emphasizes the interconnections between various risk factors, which is the main contribution to the research in the field. A panel ARDL model and PMG estimator have been applied on monthly data between 2007 a...

Digitalization has been a constantly increasing driver of the standard of living worldwide, providing mechanisms through which quotidian activities are simplified, errors reduced, and development of nations accelerated. Therefore, people, businesses and governments became dependent on the good functionality of technological advances integrated in t...

The macroeconomic situation is correlated with the performance of the banking sector, and the last financial and economic crisis clearly demonstrated that. That is why we have considered the external factors of the banking sectors in this research. Our analysis covers the post-crisis period when the macroeconomic environment became more stable to s...

The latest European Union measures for combating climate adopted in the “Fit for 55 package” envisage the extension of the Emissions Trading System, the first “cap-and-trade” system in the world created for achieving climate targets, which limits the amount of greenhouse gas emissions by imposing a price on carbon. In this context, our study provid...

The digital revolution is fundamentally changing business strategies, structures and evolution, consumer behaviour and regulatory approaches. More than ever, the current pandemic has intensified the role of the ICT sector for economic and social survival and resilience and profiled it as a “winner” when compared to other sectors and industries. The...

The former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe and, implicitly, their economies, went through specific and sometimes asymmetric developments since the fall of the “iron curtain” at the end of the 1980s. During those years, they faced many challenges to create a secure and predictable economic environment for individuals and businesses...

This paper proposes a new approach toward understanding the financial performance dynamics in the EU retail sector (pre-pandemic); we focus on the connection between indebtedness and solvency risk and other areas of corporate performance (e.g., liquidity, assets efficiency, and profitability). Its contribution resides in identifying the drivers beh...

Identifying the major driving factors behind variations in profitability across firms is a question addressed by many researchers, at industry, economic sector, country level, or through regional and international comparisons. Empirical approaches have shown that profitability variation across firms and industries, is the norm, rather the exception...

Our paper addresses the relevance of a set of continuous and categorical variables that describe industry characteristics to differences in performance between foreign versus locally owned companies in industries with dissimilar levels of technological intensity. Including data on manufacturing sector performance from 20 European Union member count...

Our paper explores non-specialised food and beverages predominant retail trade in EU between 2011 and 2019, aiming at identifying major determinants of growth and profitability at firm level. We have applied the k-means statistical algorithm to find homogeneous groups of retailers that are as dissimilar as possible from each other, and the machine-...

The present paper undertakes an analysis of the manufacturing sector performance in the European Union after the 2007-2009 Global financial crisis, with the aim of discovering the lessons to be learned for the post-pandemic world. We employ aggregate data at industry level and use a methodology based on mean difference tests and two-samples Kolmogo...

Given the high resilience of the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) banking sectors during the last financial crisis and their major role in the CEE region in financing the economy and supporting the high growth rates achieved there, our paper investigates the determinants of banking profitability in the CEE banking sectors based on a Generalized Met...

The European Union’s environmental goal by 2050 is to become the first climate-neutral continent in the world. This means specific efforts for diversifying the energy mix and investing in low-carbon energy. Our study investigates the nexus among carbon emissions, energy consumption and mix, and economic growth in a modified framework that includes...

Our paper investigates the gaps in performance in the manufacturing sector between Western and Eastern European countries and attempts to analyze how enterprises from these two parts of Europe have tackled recovery after the Global financial crisis of 2007-2009. We uncover the patterns of performance in the after-crisis period and offer insights in...

This paper assesses the benefits and risks of international investments made on the Romanian stock market, from the perspective of euro-based investors. We investigate the contribution of exchange rate volatility to the total risk of these investments over a period of nine years, between January 2011 and December 2019, by using monthly values for t...

This book includes papers presented at the 11th International Conference “Economies of the Balkan and Eastern European Countries” (EBEEC), held in Bucharest, Romania, in May 2019. It sheds new light on the micro- and macroeconomic developments in the Eastern European and Balkan countries, while at the same time taking into account the broader regio...

This paper investigates the relationship between financial companies’ stock prices and nonrenewable energy sources prices (crude oil and coal price) using a sample of major financial companies headquartered in the EU. The link between stock prices and nonrenewable energy sources prices risk is modeled using a set of macroeconomic variables, such as...

The global economy is considerably dependent on fossil fuels, of which oil is by far the most important, and concerns about the impact of oil price volatility on the real economy have been recently fuelled by the positive correlation between oil and stock prices. This positive correlation might be explained by a joint response of both oil and stock...

Background and objectives: Breast cancer is among the most common cancer types encountered during pregnancy. Here, we aimed to describe the characteristics, management, and outcomes of women with pregnancy-associated breast cancer at a tertiary-level hospital in Romania. Material and Methods: We retrospectively and prospectively collected demograph...

The paper proposes a new method for analysing the structure and dynamics of economic activity undertaken by locally owned and foreign-owned companies within the European Union. We employ an unsupervised learning algorithm that generates a neural network depicted on Kohonen maps and offering a clustering of companies with a different ownership (loca...

Despite the attempts of an impressive number of theories to identify and clarify the determinants of business performance and of the many studies that considered various variables that may impact performance, the issue of corporate performance remains a boundless topic that draws attention of practitioners and researchers. Entering this debate, our...

Specific and older age-associated comorbidities increase mortality risk in severe forms of coronavirus disease (COVID-19). We matched COVID-19 comorbidities with causes of death in 28 EU countries for the total population and for the population above 65 years and applied a machine-learning-based tree clustering algorithm on shares of death for COVI...

Background. C-section rate in Romania is the second-highest in the European Union (44.1% in 2017) and the number of C-sections performed in the country increased by 32.1% between 2009 and 2017. We offer for the first time insights into the practice and perceptions of patients and doctors in Romania towards delivery mode and on health system particu...

Background. Cesarean section (C-section) rate in Romania is the second-highest in the European Union (44.1% in 2017), and the number of C-sections performed in the country has increased in the past decades. Given how common C-section is now, it is important to gain insight into the practice and perceptions of patients and doctors in countries with...

Background. Cesarean section (C-section) rate in Romania is the second-highest in the European Union (44.1% in 2017), and the number of C-sections performed in the country has increased in the past decades. Given how common C-section is now, it is important to gain insight into the practice and perceptions of patients and doctors in countries with...

This study investigates the relationship between oil price fluctuations and renewable energy stock returns using daily data on Brent crude oil prices and global renewable energy stock market indices between 29 November 2010 and 18 February 2020. The investigation is based on the existing evidence on positive correlations between stock prices and oi...

Our research investigates the performance of companies from Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in the period after the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009 with the aim of identifying the driving factors behind accounting- and market-based performance. We include in the analysis companies from various industries in CEE countries that are...

Our paper builds on the importance of high-tech manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services as significant competitiveness and economic growth drivers in the European Union and offers a fresh approach of the study on the competitiveness of secondary and tertiary high-tech industries across EU member states. Our analysis covers the 2008–2015 peri...

In recent years an alarming situation concerning the global financial markets is represented by the fact that Brent crude oil price and stock prices created the impression that they are strongly correlated. Besides, crude oil represents an indispensable and critical resource for the world economy and European Union member countries are net oil impo...

Crude oil is an indispensable resource for the world economy and European Union (EU) countries are strongly dependent on oil imports. In a framework defined by generally positive correlations between oil and stock prices, the paper investigates the relationship between financial companies’ stock prices and crude oil price using a sample of major fi...

The availability of open government data has expanded considerably in recent years. This expansion is expected to generate significant benefits not just for increasing government transparency, but also for the economy. The aim of this study is to illustrate the use of open government data in estimating personal income levels for all 3181 municipali...

Our study addresses the link between ownership concentration and corporate performance in the manufacturing sector in the European Union in an economic environment stressed by the global financial and sovereign debt crises. This is, to our knowledge, the first attempt to tackle differences between companies with different origin-countries in EU fro...

Our paper investigates the location attributes of a large sample of emerging economies from the perspective of foreign direct investments and multinational companies presence abroad. We use several macroeconomic variables that take into account the relevant location attributes for the decision of multinational companies to invest abroad and include...

Objective: To evaluate how contraception use is linked to information, knowledge and attitudes towards family planning and contraception of medical students. Methods: This is a voluntary cross-sectional study using an anonymous questionnaire applied to 62 medical students. The questionnaire had the following main structure: characteristics of th...

Our chapter investigates the economic exposure to currency risk of stock markets from nine countries in South-Eastern Europe using bilateral exchange rates of the domestic currencies against their main trading partners’ currencies between 1999 and 2015. The relevance and magnitude of exposures are investigated through changes in exchange rates in l...

The Bologna Process has as one of its main pillars the link between academic curricula and labour market requirements. This process has built a space for dialogue and cooperation which reaches far beyondEurope, where the basic values of the European society – freedom of expression and research, free movements of academics and students, students act...

Our paper investigates the FDI attracting potential of emerging markets by in terms of their location attributes. We use Statistical cluster analysis to study the dynamic evolution of emerging markets’ clusters, based on country attributes that are relevant for the MNEs location decision. We find that countries tend to be grouped at a geographical...