FORMATION OF INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS AND BUSINESS MODELS

International competitiveness is an integrative concept that unites the whole range of key issues related to the sustainable growth of national welfare and living standards.The aim of the work is to determine the essence of modern understanding of economic competitiveness, features and factors influencing it both externally - from the world economy and internal, directions of competitiveness theory, as well as to develop an author's concept of assessing competitive business advantages of developing economy. natural resources, and determining the most effective strategy to increase the level of competitiveness of the economy and business.The article systematizes historical and modern theoretical approaches to the analysis of competitiveness at the macro level and the existing applied methods of calculating international competitiveness. The priority models of the European concept of innovative business development are considered in detail: business model №1 - creation of investment institutions that stimulate the subjects of international financial, scientific and industrial activities to innovate; business model №2 - creating a favorable environment for an innovative economy; business model №3 - development of humanitarian capital and formation of a general innovation culture in society.It is proved that competitiveness is a complex concept that is determined by many factors, the most acceptable way to assess the level of competitiveness is to use multidimensional or composite indicators of competitiveness.

Institutional models of public order as a factor of economic development and national welfare

The relevant scientific problems include characterizing different models of public order in the context of divergence of economic development; deepening the understanding of public welfare as a measure to meet the needs and results of public policy; assessment of the cognitive and practical potential of modern concepts of historical and institutional explanation of the differentiation of the world economy for the optimization of regulatory measures of economic policy in Ukraine. The purpose of this article is to determine the features of the relationship between the nature of institutions, in particular institutional models of public order, on the one hand, and economic development and social welfare on the other. The research methodology combines the tools of evolutionary economic theory, comparative analysis and institutional history. The theoretical basis is the idea of D. North on the types of institutional models of public order. Despite the historical and national features of the formation and functioning of different economic systems, their success and failure can be explained on the basis of typology of North's models. The open access model is more conducive to economic growth and social welfare. Ensuring the institutional conditions for the realization of human rights, economic freedom and legal protection contributes to higher results. Instead, the restricted access model is characterized by slow economic growth and vulnerability to challenges, low level of social consolidation and economic solidarity, dominance of hierarchical ties and insecurity of property rights. It has been proven that institutional changes aimed at increasing public welfare should ensure the transformation of the economic model towards greater availability of resources and opportunities, replacing extractive relations and vertical relations with partnerships and horizontal relations. Economic policy analysis and evaluation is an important component of successful institutional transformations.

Chapter 3: The Role of Food Exports in Russia’s Economy

As Russia’s agri-food exports have increased in recent years, the role of food exports has evolved from being negligible at the beginning of the 2000s to almost 30 percent of agricultural production in recent years. Agri-food exports account for a substantial amount of growth in the agricultural sector. The contribution of food exports to the national economy, however, is minor. Food exports’ net contribution to the national budget is about zero. Technical advances suggest that the role of agricultural exports in the national economy will keep gradually growing but will remain a secondary factor in national welfare.

Ethics

This chapter seeks to clarify some of the core ethical arguments surrounding welfare states. The analysis focuses on three key values. First, we will consider the concept of need. What are basic needs? How do we conceptualize and measure them? Do citizens have rights to what they need? Second, we focus on principles of equality and, third, we look at arguments surrounding the implications of the welfare state for liberty. A final section concludes by noting some normative issues moving increasingly to the forefront of debate. A changing global political context raises new issues about the international salience of these issues, questions which national welfare states have found it difficult to address.

Globalization

This chapter examines the theory and research on the historical and contemporary impacts of economic globalization on trajectories of national welfare states across the globe. It reviews the central contending theories that globalization’s social policy impacts are negative (the efficiency thesis) or positive (the compensation thesis). It also summarizes various contingency arguments such as the idea that globalization’s impacts are conditioned by national political economic institutions. As to extant research, it surveys comparative, quantitative studies on social impacts of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ‘first wave’ of globalization and of contemporary internationalization of markets in developed and developing political economies. The central findings of work on developed democracies are that during the first wave of globalization, and in the three decades after the Second World War, globalization was associated with increases in social protection against risks and transfers to losers of international competition (the compensation thesis); for recent decades, scholars lean towards the view that globalization is associated with modest retrenchments in social welfare provision. Substantial evidence also exists for the notion that these effects are contingent on domestic institutions. For developing nations, many studies show that international openness has been associated with cuts in core social insurance and welfare programmes and with increases in (or no effect on) education and health programmes. Studies also suggest that globalization’s social impacts are contingent on temporal context and domestic institutions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of promising new areas of inquiry on globalization and national welfare states in the twenty-first century.

Intergovernmental Organizations

This survey reviews the role of intergovernmental organizations (IO) in domestic social policy. It first describes those IOs which are most relevant for national welfare states in developed nations: the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the International Labour Organization (ILO). Then it deals with the modes and means by which IOs attempt to have an impact on national welfare states. Five channels of influence are identified: resources, constraints, standards, evaluations, and ideas and information. The final section looks into the impact of IOs on national welfare states, the strategic interactions between IOs and domestic political actors (including blame shifting in the multi-level system), and uploading of national policies to the international level. The question of soft versus hard law, and the shift to soft law, as well as the democratic deficit on the level of IOs, are discussed.

OFFSHORE ECONOMY TENDENCIES AND CHALLENGES: CASE STUDY OF UKRAINE

The paper aims at disclosing the nature of offshore tools used for the withdrawal of capital from Ukraine, as well as suggesting measures to be undertaken by Ukrainian authorities to improve the current situation. The authors apply comparative analysis to find the data discrepancy between State Statistics Service of Ukraine and Eurostat on export-import operations between Ukraine and the EU to determine the volumes of tax evasion and avoidance in Ukraine. The article states that dynamic internationalization of financial and economic operations of Ukrainian business entities in recent decades had negative effects on national welfare due to their maneuvering of capital between affiliated units via transfer pricing and intensifying their offshorization using transborder movement of commodities, services, and factors of production resulting in the reduction of budget tax revenues, increasing the scale of cross-border outflow of capital, strengthening the strategic control of foreign countries over the production facilities of Ukraine, as well as significantly undermining national tax security, macroeconomic and social balance. Thus, Ukrainian regulatory bodies must take measures aimed at deoffshorization of business activities, structural modernization of the national economy, dynamization of macroeconomic growth, regulation of inflation and increasing the volume of foreign direct investments in Ukraine. Keywords: multinational companies, offshore, offshore financial centers, offshorization, tax avoidance, tax evasion, tax haven, Ukraine. JEL Classification H26, H31, H32 Formulas: 0; fig.: 0; tabl.: 6; bibl.: 49.

Sustainable Investment: Consequences for Psychological Well-Being

This paper sets the stage for research on sustainable investment (SI) related to psychological well-being (PWB). It recognizes the threat of current global consumption levels to exceed the planetary boundaries and asks what roles financial markets may play in reducing these threats without compromising PWB. SI integrates environmental (E), social (S), and governance (G) factors alongside financial factors in investments in company shares and bonds as well as through active engagement in companies. Barriers to ESG integration include lower short-term financial performance, higher financial risks, and insufficient ESG screening by investors. A brief review of PWB shows that reliable and valid measurement methods have been developed, that the resulting measures complement economic and social national welfare indicators, and that health, sufficient material welfare, income equality, and non-material consumption are important determinants of PWB. The challenge is to globally reduce private material consumption levels in affluent countries. It is suggested that one role SI may play is in investing or actively engaging in companies that efficiently meet an increasing consumer demand of non-material consumption. Future research should address this role of SI.

A MACRO-COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF WELFARE STATE CONVERGENCE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

In this paper, we provide a macro-comparative assessment of welfare state convergence. Using the welfare state regime approach, the paper analyses the development of main welfare state indicators within in the enlarged European Union. In this study we capitalize on descriptive statistics and a single convergence analysis based on standard deviation in order to capture alterations in national welfare models of 26 European countries and among acknowledged welfare regimes. Our fundamental aim is to seize on long-term processes (convergence, divergence, or persistence), so we cover almost a two-decade period starting at 2000. Our results, in general, suggest that convergence among welfare states (different indicator of social spending) of European countries is particularly weak, however convergence inside welfare regimes is significantly stronger apart from the Anglo-Saxon group. The pre-crisis period was characterized by a stronger convergence among European countries as a consequence of economic prosperity and intense EU intervention.