Social Dimensions of Political Risk – SDPR: Concept and Index for Risk Impact on Society

Political risk concerns the profits and investment plans of international business (MNCs, FDI). The Social Dimensions of Political Risk – SDPR is an unchartered territory of political risk. Consequently, on the basis of the analysis of theories of risk, political risk, systems, values and globalization the concept for SDPR is generated. This concept is based on basic assumptions: 1) society is a system whose elements are subsystems; 2) the societal subsystem is at the core of society; 3) the relation between societal subsystem and society is such as the relation element – system; 4) political risk is systemic; 5) values are axial to the system, and their carrier is the societal subsystem; 6) laws are an artificial construct that has only a value function, but is not a value; 7) the incommensurability between values and the above mentioned artificial construct generates SDPRs that are relevant to the risk for society. A formal theoretical and analytical model of SDPR and a value triangle and conceptual index of SDPR based on it are introduced. Key conclusions pertain to the following: the need for reconsider the paradigm of democracy; greater participation of the societal subsystem; need for subsystems’ mutual restraint based on the principle of authorities’ restraint.

Social Trust as an Underlying Substance of Cultural Preferences

The role and the importance of social trust have been objects of a comparatively well-defined interest among investigators with sociology and social psychology backgrounds. Unfortunately, this is not so true when it comes to economists. In Economics, even the link between culture and economic development still lacks the necessary attention. On the other hand, in order to explain this link, it will be of help and importance to take social trust into consideration both directly and as an infrastructural element of some important cultural dimensions. This article – being generally with a nature of an overview – attempts to show social trust namely as such an element, offering a framework for its interpretation and showing the correlational link between trust and several cultural constructs. This will hopefully help future modelling when it comes to investigating correlational and causal links between economic parameters and generalized social trust.

Institutional Convergence of Bulgaria to the Eurozone Countries

Institutions are one of the main factors for the economic growth and development of any economy. And insofar as development is defined as a set of economic and institutional factors, the reduction of differences in the development of individual countries and regions naturally leads us to the institutional convergence, which is the object of study. When researching the convergence of Bulgaria to the EU countries and more closely to the Eurozone, many questions arise about whether there is institutional convergence and how it can be revealed. This is the subject of analysis presented in the study. The thesis presented here is that it is possible to consider institutional convergence for Bulgaria with the countries of the Euro zone, represented by qualitative and quantitative indicators, which, however, is unstable. The methodology is based on the understanding of institutional convergence as the converging of economic and political institutions, and given the fact that they are different for each of the economies; a comparative analysis is used to study the convergence as a whole. For this purpose, the analysis of institutional quality and comparative analysis uses the main indicators of the World Bank – Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) and Ease of Doing Business Indicator. The results of the pre-selected criteria give grounds to find those of the observed indicators, which reveal improvement and respectively converging in the direction of institutional convergence of Bulgaria with the countries from the EU area.

Sustainable Corporate Governance – The Purpose of the Company

The objective of this paper is to explore the latest trends in sustainable corporate governance with а focus on the purpose of the company. Referring to her previous research projects and publications, the author aims to build on the preceding findings and research results. The objective of the paper is to give an answer to whether company purpose (the new mantra) is a totally new concept within the framework of corporate governance or, in other words, whether the business community has changed completely and whether a new business model has been developed by academia, consultants and business leaders. To answer these questions the author has initiated a literature survey and web mining to get a fresh perspective from the corporate practices in the EU and US economies. Experts’ views and judgement are discussed in order to obtain information about the agenda and priorities of listed Bulgarian companies. The paper is structured as follows: overview of sustainable corporate governance (introduction); survey on the academic views on the purpose of the company (part one); investigation of the business views on the purpose (part two) and the corporate governance agenda – shareholders’ perspective on the purpose studies (part four) and conclusions and suggestions for future research.

Assessing the 2019 Redesign of Bulgarian Fiscal Equalization System

In many countries the narrowing of horizontal fiscal imbalance at local government level is an important issue of national fiscal policy. Large fiscal disparities at municipal level could lead either to lower service levels in fiscally poor regions or to higher tax rates for similar service levels in these regions. In turn, this could thwart efforts to reduce inequality in income distribution between individuals or could induce fiscally inefficient migration of business and individuals. Since the launch of fiscal decentralization reforms in Bulgaria in 2003 part of central government grants system for municipalities has been the equalization grant aimed at financing a minimum level of local services delivery. The equalization formula has undergone many changes during the years, and the last one was implemented in 2019. The main focus of the current study is to compare the equalizing effect of the equalization schemes applied in Bulgaria in 2018 and 2019. In order to test whether the 2018 and 2019 distribution formulas carry an equalizing effect with respect to municipal expenditure needs, per capita transfers received is regressed on three variables or indicators reflecting the differences in the municipal expenditure needs. Our results show that the new equalization mechanism as of 2019 is better designed to capture the differences in municipal expenditure needs and to alleviate fiscal disparities at local level when compared to the mechanism applied in 2018.

Involvement and Trust in Poland and Bulgaria in Comparison with Other European Societies

A developmental analysis of the two waves: 2008 and 2016 ESS Indicators of social engagement (we mean here organisational engagement) are treated as a measure of the process of social modernisation (Herrmann, 1999, Matei, Apostu, 2012). It is assumed here that higher scores of indicators demonstrate the 'maturity of civil society, the quality of the functioning of democracy and the process of its evolution (Boulding, 2010). The concept of generalised trust and trust in political institutions have a somewhat similar status, and they are treated as indicators of collective capacity and a premise for conclusions about the effectiveness of the development processes (Putnam, 1993, Sonderskov, 2011). The proposed presentation will focus on the changes we were able to register over eight years in Poland and Bulgaria (2008 and 2018) to indicate the position of the societies of these post-communist countries in comparison to other European countries. The main hypotheses would be to verify the relationship between trust indicators and declared involvement in NGO sector organisations as well as basic sociodemographic variables in a temporal perspective. The quantitative analysis will be preceded by a form of qualitative description and interpretation of the existing state of knowledge. ESS data would be used for the analysis, and the basis for inference will be the indices of “generalised trust”, “trust in national political institutions”, and “involvement in NGO” using regression analysis.

Value Added Tax Efficiency in the Western Balkan Countries

An important feature of the tax systems of the Western Balkan countries is the large share of consumption taxes in total tax revenue. Despite its relatively short existence, VAT in particular has proven to be an important fiscal tool, due to its many advantages. The aim of the article is to outline the main developments in VAT in these countries in the past two decades and to analyse its efficiency. The main result of the article is that the tax has good overall revenue performance in the Western Balkans, as measured with the C-efficiency ratio.

Investigating the Relation of Functioning as A Determinant of Wellbeing to Political and Social Trust in Three Balkan Countries

The measurement of wellbeing, political trust in institutions and social trust provide important indicators of the welfare of nations, political legitimacy and the stability of democratic political systems, and a country’s political culture, respectively. In this paper, the relation of functioning as a determinant of wellbeing to political and social trust was investigated using 2012 European Social Survey (ESS) datasets of three Balkan countries: Albania, Bulgaria and Kosovo. This involves first examining the structure of functioning and assess the psychometric properties of the resulting scale (or subscales). Preliminary tests explored the statistically significant relations of functioning to the political and social trust items as well as the socio-demographic variables and the left/right self-placement scale. Only in the case of the Bulgarian dataset, EFA and CFA resulted in a unidimensional valid and reliable scale measuring functioning scale comprised of all the initial eight items. Although the analysis did not result in the same structure of functioning for the three Balkan countries, it did provide a reliable and valid scale in the cases of Bulgaria and Kosovo. This work could be extended to cover all participating countries of this Round of the ESS.

Accounting Education, Accounting Profession and COVID-19?

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact, especially in terms of the many changes in regulatory and policy aspects, and in particular challenges in the accounting and education sectors. The 2020 academic year is considerably different from previous years and institutions, staff, and students are facing complex challenges. In terms of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on different countries’ education systems many differences exist. Online learning is an amalgamation of various pedagogical models instead of any one single model. The purpose of this article is to present the impact of the coronavirus on higher education in accounting, the challenges that students face in online learning and evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on the accounting profession.

Analyzing the Factors Which Influence the Effectiveness of Railway Passenger Transport

Railway transport makes significant contributions to the economy of every country. Approximately 30 000 people are directly employed in this sector in Bulgaria, and the added value to the GDP amounts to approximately 2% (NSI, 2019а). Railway transport is crucial for a more sustainable transport sector, stable economic development, as well as social cohesion and connectivity of citizens. The article presents a study of the technical and operational factors for the work of railway transport as well as energy consumption during freights. The goal is to outline the way these indicators affect the stable development of railway transport and what their actual influence is in regard to carrying out railway passenger transport. The speed and energy efficiency of railway passenger transport have been analysed, as they will serve as the foundation for specific suggestions on how to carry out passenger transport in Bulgaria more effectively.