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Procedure for Designating the Management and Control System for Structural and Investment European Funds

Author(s): Iulian Miserciu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

For the 2014-2020 programming period, the European Commission foresaw by Regulation (EU) No 1303/2013 that each Member State, before requesting reimbursement of the costs incurred in the implementation of the projects included in the first interim payment application, must undergo the so-called designation procedure. The designation procedure involves the accreditation of the constituent institutions of the management and control system for each operational program financed by the Structural and Investment Funds. The management and control system consisting of the Managing Authority, Certifying Authority and Audit Authority requires an assessment of their compliance with the criteria for the internal control environment, risk management, control and management activities and monitoring activities foreseen by the European regulation. The designation of authorities at national level is based on the audit opinion issued by the Audit Authority in accordance with internationally accepted auditing standards, which should be unqualified. Issuing a different opinion leads to non-settlement of expenditure on the operational program concerned by the European Commission. Thus, the Member State obtains a guarantee as to the necessary and appropriate structure of the systems set up for the management and control of the funds. The present article aims to present the procedure for the designation of the management and control system of an operational program and the evaluation criteria envisaged. The importance of this step is given by the fact that, depending on how these management and control systems are built, the implementation of funds can be easier or more cumbersome and the administrative bureaucratic burden for the beneficiaries can be eliminated in time. Even though the designation procedure is successfully completed, not all the premises that the implementation of the funds will meet expectations are ensured.

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The Development of the Mountain Tourism Services in Romania –the Macroeconomic Implications and Strategic Perspectives

Author(s): Maria Cristina Stefan,Violeta Andreea Andreiana,Mariana Vladu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Through this paper we intend to highlight the necessity of the development of the tertiary sector in Romania, and within it the tourism services specific to the mountain areas. The mountain was and represents for the modern man a special attraction throughout the year. Mountain tourism enjoys international recognition because it has been found that there is a great interest of the world’s population in visiting mountain regions, plus the world dimensions of mountain areas; 24% of the Earth’s surface is occupied by mountainous regions, where a population of 12% of the world’s population lives, and an additional 14% of the world’s population is at the contact of mountainous regions with neighboring regions [4]. In this context, we have proposed to develop the strategy for the development of mountain tourism services in Romania, starting from the concept of sustainable development that implies the balance between economic growth and preservation of the natural environment. The purpose of developing the development strategy is to capitalize on natural heritage, to identify solutions for the problems faced by our country in the field of tourism services and, at the same time, to develop mountain tourism in Romania. The objective of the strategy is to identify ways to develop mountain tourism services in Romania.

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Artificial Intelligence Market Disruption

Author(s): Julia M. Puaschunder / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our contemporary society imposes historically unique challenges for humankind. The emerging autonomy of AI holds unique potentials of eternal life of robots, AI and algorithms alongside unprecedented economic superiority, data storage and computational advantages. Yet to this day, it remains unclear what impact AI taking over the workforce will have on economic growth.

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Homelessness and Housing Market Condition in the United States

Author(s): Praopanu Pratoomchat / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The study estimated the relationship between the homelessness rates, the housing market factors, and the socio-economic factors in the country level, regional level, and the state level in the United States from 2007 to 2016. The results show that the housing price index, personal expenditure on housing utilities, rental vacancy rate, poverty rate, number of job loss and income inequality are significant determinants of the homelessness in the country level. For the regional level, the West had the highest homelessness rate intercept while the South West is the region with the lowest intercept. Housing price, the expenditure on housing utilities and poverty rate are the factors determining the homelessness rate in the regional level. When the study adds the fixed effects of fifty states to the model, the result shows that rental vacancy rate, number of job loss and the income inequality are three factors that can explain the change in homeless population number in the state level. To slow down the growing homelessness in the country level, the economic policy should be focusing at poverty reduction, healing people who suffered from job loss, and changing the tax policy to increase income equality. For the housing market, the government may consider the policy to support the expansion of low-cost housing units in term of both fiscal and monetary policies.

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Optimal Structure of Pension System and Its Influence on the Social Policy of State Budget

Author(s): Marina Tabatadze / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The world is witnessing an important increase in number of elderly people. This process is accompanied by the increase of the proposition of working and retired population, which has significant economic, social and political implications. To answer these challenges, the governments across the world engaged in comprehensive reforms of social policies, out of which the reform of pension system is the most important. The presented research aims to determine the main directions of pension reforms undertook by different countries. More precisely, the objective is to identify the trends characterizing reforms in developing countries and compare them to the tendencies observed in the reforms of developing economies. Therefore, the aim of research is to get generalized results, which will contribute greatly to the existing scientific literature and will be useful in the process of perfecting and improving the current pension reform. To do so, the paper studies reforms together with the existing scientific literature and public reports issued by international organizations. The results of the study suggest that the most common pension system across the globe implies introduction of the accumulated pension model (Defined Contribution Plan) instead of solidarity pension scheme (Defined Benefit Plan). This is a radical change impacting country’s economy, social and cultural norms and legislation. The reason behind the reform was the limitation of the existing model, but also the demographic trend of aging the population.

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Social Media and its Role in the Success of “100 Millions' Health” Campaign in Egypt

Author(s): May Mahfouz / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This research addresses the influence of social media with its ever-evolving techniques that serve social campaigns focusing on people as the central theme of its concern. Developers of social media techniques are always looking for and making the necessary changes through intensive and successive campaigns across various social media channels, to reach its full impact on users taking into consideration important marketing elements, such as culture and timing of said campaigns among other elements. Social media is a great way to communicate with the public. It contributes to building trust, elevates the spirits of society, enhances tolerance by considering emotions of individuals and it reinforces the feeling of belonging. It could positively affect the behavior and moral levels of humans. All that while working in an integrated framework of analysis that is run by governments, international institutions, civil society organizations and private sectors. These institutions factor in the public needs to better deliver their messages, there is no doubt that these types of social media campaigns are becoming a great deal of interest in different societies at different levels. As Egypt is aligning itself in recognizing the importance of evolution in social media and ultimately aim to change the negative reality and transform society to better reality; I will address in this study the role of social media in the success of “100 Millions’ Health” campaign that took place in Egypt. This campaign was able to gain great amount of popularity through social media networks and contributed to the convergence of Egyptian public opinion about its objectives.

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Factors Influencing Student Satisfaction in Higher Education. The Case of a Georgian State University

Author(s): Nino Tandilashvili / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

With the increasing importance, higher education is considered as a major asset for any nation’s socio-economic and technological development. The quality of education offered by the higher education institutions directly impacts country’s performance. That is why, number of scientific researches and public reports and debates agrees on the importance of the quality management in higher education. There is also an important debate on a link between the service quality and students’ satisfaction. On the one hand, there is a logical dependence of the degree of satisfaction to the perceived quality. On the other hand, number of studies have also identified a link between students’ satisfaction and their loyalty. This study looks at the determinants of student satisfaction in Georgian Higher Education Institutions. With the objective to detect the main components of service quality influencing students’ satisfaction, the article uses HEdPERF as a measuring instrument of higher education service quality. Data is collected from 793 students of one of the largest universities of the country. An exploratory factor analysis six factors for the further examination. After scale development, a multiple regression analysis is used to test the research hypothesis. The results of the study show that the administrative factors are the most sensitive and have a positive influence on the students’ satisfaction. Also, there is a positive relation between academic programs and student’s satisfaction. The disproportionate attitude is observed between the importance of academic factors and satisfaction.

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Mid-Level Management Style in Healthcare

Author(s): Jamion Lewis,Kruti Lehenbauer / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The purpose of this paper is to recommend a quantitative model based on the outcomes from a comprehensive literature review of multiple studies to identify the most effective leadership style among mid-level managers in a healthcare setting. This literature review includes theories of leadership and discusses the usual leadership methods associated with mid-level managers. This study addresses the effectiveness of transactional, transformational, and passive leadership styles of middle level managers in healthcare organizations. The proposed quantitative non-experimental correlational study would examine the statistical relationships between the independent variables of three leadership styles (transformational, transactional, and passive leadership) and the dependent variable of leadership effectiveness among mid-level managers in the healthcare industry. This literature analysis proposes how to clearly define the variables transformational leadership, transactional leadership, passive leadership, and leader effectiveness which would eventually make it possible to quantify and measure them.

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Perception of Residents, Community Participation and Support for Tourism Development in the Old Town Muang Songkhla, Thailand

Author(s): Wilawan Jansri / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

It is well known that community participation is the foundation for sustainable tourism development. The research focuses on the effects of perceptions among residents on community participation and explores the impacts of community participation on Support for Tourism Development in the Old Town Muang Songkhla, Thailand. The study employed a systematic random sampling method using a questionnaire to accessed resident perceptions of the Old Town Muang Songkhla, Thailand. The Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) techniques were applied to analyze the data. The results from 222 surveys revealed that community participation is influenced by both positive perceptions and negative perception of the residents. Moreover, the finding supports the effect of community participation on Support for Tourism Development. It is a clear statement that the role of the residence is important to support tourism development and maintain its strong growth. This research provokes reflections on community participation theory and management practices in the Thailand context.

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Bancassurance: Challenges and Opportunities in Republic of Serbia

Author(s): Ivana Marinović Matović / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Bancassurance is not just a sale of insurance products at bank counters, but a complex cooperation involving both partners in the project realization, with the goal of satisfying their own interests as well as clients' interests. In the Republic of Serbia, banks began to deal with insurance activities in 2007. Since then, the sale of insurance products through banks has been constantly growing. The paper will present the current bancassurance models in the Republic of Serbia: integral distribution; expert distribution and combined distribution. The paper will present the comprehensive condition of bancassurance in the Republic of Serbia, above all the legal framework of the bancassurance concept; activities necessary for the successful implementation of bancassurance; market participants; competition among banking products and insurance products; the current level of cooperation between banks and insurance companies. Participants in the insurance market established by the Republic of Serbia, such as the National Mortgage Insurance Corporation, the Serbian Export Credit and Insurance Agency and the Deposit Insurance Agency, will be presented in paper, with an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of state insurance regulations. By gathering facts and data based on available literature and public databases, the current state of the insurance market and the possibilities for further development of bancassurance in the Republic of Serbia will be determined. The choice of a bancassurance model is essential for the successful functioning of the overall concept and its long-term sustainability in a dynamic business environment. The paper points to the fact that by designing an adequate bancassurance model, there may be a significant development of the Serbian financial services market.

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The Future of the European Union

Author(s): Titus Corlăţean / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The European project known as European Union has brought during the years lasting peace, democracy and respect for fundamental human rights and liberties, prosperity and welfare for its member states and peoples. The current challenges and transformations of EU redefine the project and different scenarios were proposed from this perspective by the European Commission and a number of political European leaders. This is why the future of the European Union became one of the main topics under the Romanian EU Presidency of the Council in the first semester of 2019. Each of the main 4 priorities of the Romanian Presidency of the Council reflects important dimensions of the integrated vision related to the profile, role and weight of the future European Union. The Inter-parliamentary conference organized in Bucharest in the beginning of April 2019 brought therefore a substantial contribution to this vision through the Declaration adopted by the members of the EU national parliaments on this occasion.

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Notes on Work Super-Exploitation: A Study on the Topicality of the “Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall”

Author(s): Vitorio Felipe Santosbra Valenzuela Toro,Jesus Ranieri / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

It is intended, into the scope of this work, to analyze the Marxian categories presented in the Capital, Volume III; and analyze the case of the mass dismissals occurred in the USIMINAS steel mill in Cubatão (SP) between 2015 and 2017 based on them. Marx argues that the price of the merchandise falls as the productivity grows (Tendency of the rate of profit to fall). This happens because only the living labor is able to add value to the merchandise. The fall in the rates of profit of the capitalists happens because, as the variable capital in the productive process diminishes, less value is created in the productive process; therefore, the unitary value of the merchandise falls. Marx presents some anti-cyclical measures that defer, for a while, this tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Among the six anti-cyclical measures presented by Marx, attention will be given to the two first: I) Elevation of the degree of exploitation of the work force: as the work hours are augmented and the rhythm of work intensified, the capitalist appropriates greater rates of surplus work and surplus value. II) Compression of salaries under their value. In the case studied, USIMINAS (Cubatão) has not offered a real salary increase since 2010. After the company has applied afore mentioned measures between 2015 and 2017, it has presented significant growth in its profit rates.

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Evolution of Academic Freedom in the US Higher Education System as Part of Constitutional Principles

Author(s): Mindia Ugrekhelidze,Ekaterine Bakaradze / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The present paper aims at analyzing the development of academic freedom in the USA as a part of Constitutional principles. The main objective of this research is to identify legal approaches regarding academic freedom, reveal positive and negative sides of its development. It is essential to study the professional and legal definition of the term to determine its international context, what the notion of academic freedom means for the modern society. The research indicates that modern legal constitutional analysis of academic freedom is incomplete for the protection of the interests of academic society. Constitutionally guaranteed academic freedom is limited by state action doctrine, restriction of the principles of freedom of expression of the public servant and judicial decisions, which gives freedom only to the universities and leaves professors’ interests without protection when their interests are contrary to the university’s interests. Academic freedom guaranteed by the constitution, may be incompatible with the concept that implies freely exchanging the ideas in the marketplace of ideas, which are likely to be limited by universities. In order to completely understand and evaluate the importance and purpose of academic freedom, it is necessary to study those cases which led to the establishment of American Association of University Professors - AAUP and the protection of academic freedom in American universities.

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The Equity and Inclusion in Higher Education: A Proposed Model for Open Data

Author(s): Carla Hamida,Amanda Landi,Ziyi Liu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Recently, governmental institutions and private industries in power have been pushed to be more transparent so that more people can have ownership of their data. Another type of institution with a large amount of power over data are educational institutions. Colleges and Universities around the globe store a significant amount of data on millions of students, such as financial aid, grades, dropout or graduation, successes after graduation. Each institution is rated with respect to these items and more, and potential students are making decisions to go to the school based on these ratings. Therefore, it is imperative for students, who invest their time and their money into the school of their choice, to know the truth. In 2017, the College Transparency Act and the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act were passed, which were created to push transparency for data in higher education. The openness of data in higher education will be beneficial to prospective students. The push for these two bills coincided with the bitcoin bubble. In the past three years, experts in economics, medicine, and supply chain management have been researching methods on how to implement blockchains to create optimal and decentralized data systems. In this paper, we propose a model for open data in higher education inspired by the Bitcoin, which uses blockchain. When used together with InterPlanetary File System, a peer-to-peer distributed file system, we can create a decentralized platform that increases accessibility of data and autonomy of prospective students.

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The Legal Status Regarding the Romanian Tax Executor

Author(s): Alice Maria Cristina Zdanovschi / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This article focuses on the legal provisions governing the institution of the Romanian tax executor and aims to identify its legal status, by presenting its role and tasks in the tax execution procedure, and at the same time presents comparative aspects between the tax executor and the court executor. So, the forced execution of fiscal obligations is a way of extinguishing them. Furthermore, according to the special provisions existing in the field of taxation, when the taxpayers have not fulfilled their fiscal obligations at the date when they became due, the right of the state to pass to forced execution of the fiscal obligations is born on this date. And due to the enforceability of the title of the tax claim, the forced execution procedure carried out by the tax authorities is not preceded by another judicial procedure. Moreover, the tax authorities fulfill the forced execution procedure through tax executors, thus, the importance of its legal status is more than relevant compared to the “common law” executor in the Romanian legal system, which is the court executor.

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Mental Temporal Accounting

Author(s): Julia M. Puaschunder / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This paper introduces Mental Temporal Accounting – the behavioral economics application of mental accounting in the time domain. While most discounting studies are in the finance domain, social and environmental components have not gotten as much attention as appearing to require based on the novel perspectives this research grants. Theoretically we may also derive conclusions for contact theory and point at opening monetary gains focuses to social and environmental cues that may nudge people to perceive time differently and act on it accordingly. As mental accounting was successfully introduced to be extendable onto time, traditional mental accounting theory (Thaler 1999) should be revisted for attention to time discounting in the social and environmental spheres alongside the economic attention. Elucidating how contexts and experiencing critical life stages of parenthood influence temporal activity allocation choices promises to improve manifold decisions on education, health, asset management, career paths and common goods preservation throughout life for this generation and the following.

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Transparency, Accountability and Participation through Social Audit: Case of MGNREGA in Sikkim, India

Author(s): Feba Varghese / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Transparency, accountability and participation (TAP) are some essential elements for ensuring democratic governance. Social audit is an operational instrument to reduce corruption by empowering people to scrutinize public expenses, detect corruption, and ensure accountability. Social audit is one of the robust element of MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) in India as they work through the Panchayat, and stimulate the public to participate with a sense of communal accountability. At the state level even five years after the issue of operational guidelines, we witness wide variations in the quality of social audits. Different states have adopted their own models and while some of them are successful, some of the states have still not set up and some are in the process of setting up an independent social audit unit. The Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) model of social audit in the state of Sikkim which is not widely discussed in literature is the focus of the study. This research attempts to study the efficacy of Social audit as a tool to bring Transparency, Accountability and Participation in MGNREGA taking the case of Sikkim.

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Corporate Financing in Romania

Author(s): Sebastian Bodu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Two are the external sources of corporate financing: equity and debt. These are exclusive (other sources of external financing no longer exist, but only variants thereof) and can be combined in turn. Capital with which a company is financed is its engine, no company being able to operate without capital regardless of the industry. Funding may be private or public. Private financing is provided through banking credit or equity contracted through direct negotiation with investors. Each mode of financing has advantages and disadvantages, not only in terms of financial costs (direct) but also indirect costs. Internal funding source is self-financing, i.e. reinvesting the company's profit instead of distributing it in the form of dividends. Balancing the use of internal and external financing sources, as well as the share of an external source in relation to another external source, primarily depending on the cost of financing (direct or opportunity) is a difficult, important and complex decision. The more the company is and / or the more attractive for investors, the more varied the range of financing options and the cost structure that is heavily influenced by rating agencies. Conversely, a small company without too many development prospects will not have access to all available sources in the market and will have to confine itself to small bank loans. Corporate contributions can be in cash, in kind, in debt and in services. They constitute the common fund that the shareholders exploit under the umbrella of the legal personality of the company. From a legal point of view, contributions become property of the company (assets) and it dispose of them as it deems necessary by spending, selling or mortgaging. In order to be valid, the contributions must fulfill several conditions. In all cases, the contributions must be real, fictitious inputs being forbidden. Apart from the reality of contributions, they must also be useful to company. In exchange for its contribution, the shareholder receives shares incorporating rights, which for a shareholder or future shareholder interested in his investment is the share of legal capital or, in other words, the share of the legal capital represented by his shares in the company. The second form of external financing, credit, may be private or institutionalized. Institutionalized credit is an interest-rate loan granted by a financial institution such as a bank, an investment fund, or a non-banking financial institution. In practice, funders put conditions for the funded company in relation to its shareholders, managers or assets, so as to avoid changes that would risk reimbursing the credit. The statute of limitation of the right to request repayment of the credit is within three years of the maturity date, and in the case of successive loans between the same parties, a separate term will begin to run for each loan. The repayment of credits granted in a given currency must be made in the same currency, regardless of the increase or decrease of the value of the respective currency against other currencies (the monetary denomination rule). To hedge foreign exchange risk, some companies resort to hedging through options on the foreign exchange market in the form of risk transactions in the opposite direction to that assumed by the contracted loan.

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What Makes a State Swing?

Author(s): Jonathan L. Clayton / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

This report provides a methodology for defining and identifying true swing states in US presidential elections. After these states are identified by cross-tabulating high-performing states under the categories of battleground (states with the lowest margin between competitors), shift (states with the highest frequency of flipping from Republican to Democrat or vice-versa), and bellwether (the accuracy of a state to vote concurrently with the winner of the electoral college) during the US presidential elections from 1992 through 2016, an examination is completed to determine any similarities among these states in terms of median household income, population density, racial demographics, political party affiliation, voter behavior, and voter registration. These states are then compared to national averages to determine if the “average swing state” can be identified. Hecht and Schultz utilize a four-point method for identifying swing states (2015). This report attempts to utilize less arbitrary data, using a three-point methodology: battleground, shift, and bellwether.

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Some Aspects of Forensic Identification

Author(s): Lucia Cerasela Balan / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Forensic identification is a very important factor in the investigation of both civil and criminal investigations. The object of forensic identification is the whole of the objects, phenomena, qualities, time and space intervals, the physical attributes or psychic actions of the person. Almost all cases are directly linked to the person, and information about the appearance or appearance of a person is among the most important. Information about age, gender, ethnicity is provided by the unique and almost unique look that each person is endowed with. Available evidence about a person's physical appearance can always be associated with functional features such as voice, hair color, mimics, etc. The essential content of probation with the help of forensic identification is the detection, detachment of the object or person involved from an indeterminate totality of objects or potential persons. Of great importance are both the clothes and the personal objects that give a complete picture and help identify the person. Specialized persons have the duty to perform the identification activity.

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