Search Results (11)

Active labor market policies (ALMPs) targeting self-employment have become a well-established and relevant instrument within employment promotion strategies across many European countries. However, despite their strategic and economic importance, there is limited evidence on their potential performance prior to implementation. This paper aims to address this gap by conducting an ex-ante cost–benefit simulation of different types of ALMPs designed to promote self-employment in Spain. The methodology is based on estimating public costs per beneficiary and quantifiable potential benefits, including avoided welfare payments, additional tax revenues, and the generation of economic activity. These benefits are adjusted using two key parameters: additionality (the proportion of the effect genuinely attributable to the policy) and persistence (the duration of the impact over time). In addition, three sensitivity scenarios (conservative, baseline, and favorable) are developed. The results suggest that financing and access to credit policies exhibit the most robust returns, while direct subsidies, general tax incentives, and emergency policies are more sensitive to intervention design features. Consequently, the effectiveness of ALMPs targeting self-employment depends fundamentally on their ability to align with the specific frictions faced by potential entrepreneurs and on the persistence of their effects. Full article

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 remains highly uneven across countries, while the structural factors associated with this heterogeneity are still insufficiently understood. This study aims to classify 154 countries according to their full 17-dimensional SDG achievement profiles and to identify the structural indicators statistically associated with the observed typological differences. A two-stage analytical approach was applied. First, k-means cluster analysis based on the scores of all 17 SDGs was used to identify homogeneous groups of countries. Second, canonical discriminant analysis was performed for 64 countries with complete data for 17 indicators selected from international sources according to the “one indicator–one goal” principle. The cluster analysis identified three typologically homogeneous groups of countries that broadly correspond to differences in development level but are not reducible to them. The discriminant model achieved apparent classification accuracy of 90.63% (p < 0.0001), while the first canonical function explained 90.3% of the between-group variation. LOO cross-validation yielded an accuracy of 71.43%, confirming that the model retains meaningful discriminatory power beyond the estimation sample, while the difference between apparent and cross-validated accuracy reflects the constraints of a small sample relative to the number of predictors. The strongest differentiating indicators were the proportion of the urban population living in slums, the Global Peace Index, access to sanitation, and poverty. Overall, the results show that SDG achievement profiles constitute an independent analytical characteristic of countries and that typological differences are primarily associated with basic human development and institutional stability. Full article

This conceptual and analytical study examines how digitalization may reduce the cost and complexity of ESG and circular economy reporting for women-led SMEs within the evolving EU sustainability reporting framework. Particular attention is given to selected contextual examples from the Danube Region. Using a conceptual accounting approach grounded in EU regulatory documents, the academic literature, and prior bibliometric research, it identifies four key challenge domains: measurement, valuation, disclosure, and professional judgment. The analysis is complemented by an exploratory public data illustration based on publicly available documents and illustrative cases of women-led SMEs from the Danube Region. The empirical illustration is intended solely to contextualize and demonstrate the practical visibility of the proposed accounting domains rather than to validate the conceptual framework statistically. It develops an accounting-oriented problem matrix linking these challenges to digital enablers such as data platforms, automation tools, and traceability technologies. The findings suggest that digital accounting capabilities may support more efficient, reliable, comparable, and scalable ESG reporting. A conceptual framework is proposed, connecting regulatory drivers, digital accounting capabilities, and reporting outcomes, including enhanced assurance readiness and potentially improved access to finance. The study also outlines practical recommendations, including minimum viable ESG datasets and a staged digital adoption approach, alongside policy implications related to harmonized data requests and targeted capacity-building for SMEs. The study contributes to the literature by integrating ESG reporting, circular economy, digitalization, and gender-related constraints affecting women-led SMEs within an explicitly accounting-centered analytical framework. Full article

This study revisits the debate surrounding the impact of Official Development Assistance (ODA), also known as foreign aid, on two macro-indicators: economic growth and child mortality. Unlike previous studies, which assessed the interaction of aid with composite indicators of recipient countries, this study examines the impacts of individual recipient factors, such as corruption, democracy, income, wars and exports. To overcome the issue of an inverse causal relationship potentially existing between the amount of aid received and macro-performance, a model of donor aid allocation is specified within an instrumental variables framework. The results show that ODA is more likely to be positively associated with economic growth in countries with lower levels of corruption. This positive association is evident when the level of corruption is at least one standard deviation lower than the recipient’s average. The interaction of ODA with recipients’ levels of democracy, income, wars or exports does not show a significant association with growth. The association between ODA and child mortality appears to be generally more significant, with a positive sign, than that obtained for economic growth, although the magnitude is relatively modest. Full article

Global crises often force a pivotal choice between protecting human legacy and ensuring financial survival, yet the psychological drivers behind these trade-offs remain poorly understood. While family firms are traditionally viewed as inherently resilient, the unique emotional attachments of their owners may constrain their ability to adapt to unprecedented shocks. This study examines the behavioral underpinnings of crisis management across 11 European nations during the COVID-19 pandemic, challenging the traditional stewardship paradigm. Findings reveal a significant tension between preserving socioemotional wealth and economic survival. While family-managed firms prioritized personnel retention and financial autonomy, thus avoiding the psychological stigma of government aid, these non-financial priorities often proved detrimental to liquidity and business survival. This suggests that high emotional endowment can induce behavioral rigidity and an escalation of commitment, hindering strategic pivots. Furthermore, the results highlight a trend toward mimetic isomorphism, where extreme uncertainty forced a convergence of crisis responses across diverse organizational structures. Overall, the contribution of this study is to challenge the resilience myth, illustrating that acute shocks often override the distinctive behavioral archetype of family firms, forcing a shift toward institutional conformity and standardized mandates. Full article

As digital consumption increasingly unfolds in hybrid phygital environments, algorithmic systems play a growing role in shaping user choices, perceptions of fairness, and sustainability-related behaviour. Prior research has examined sustainable consumption, digital nudging, platform trust, and consumer behaviour in digital settings, but has rarely integrated perceived algorithmic fairness, digital resilience, and algorithmic responsibility perception within a single user-centered framework. Addressing this gap, this study develops and tests a multidimensional model of sustainable platform behavior (SPB). Using a triangulated design that combines bibliometric support analysis, PLS-SEM modelling, multi-group analysis, and cluster-based user segmentation, the study identifies three distinct user types and examines the relationships among the focal constructs. The results show that perceived fairness significantly predicts ARP (β = 0.493, p < 0.001), while both ARP (β = 0.427, p < 0.001) and digital resilience (β = 0.263, p < 0.001) independently contribute to SPB. The findings indicate that sustainable platform behavior is shaped not only by intention, but also by fairness perceptions, adaptive user capacity, and responsibility-based evaluations of platform systems. The study offers a user-centered framework with practical implications for designing more responsible, transparent, and sustainability-oriented digital platforms. Full article

Rural industrial integration is widely recognized as a pivotal strategy for rural revitalization and sustainable development. However, despite its potential to foster economic growth, its actual impact on the livelihood resilience of individual farm households remains a complex issue that requires empirical validation. Drawing upon the Sustainable Livelihood Analysis (SLA) framework and micro-level data from the China Land Economic Survey (CLES) (2020–2022), this study employs propensity score matching (PSM) and the conditional mixed process (CMP) method to systematically examine the impact of rural industrial integration on household livelihood resilience, its transmission mechanisms, and its heterogeneous effects. The empirical results demonstrate that rural industrial integration significantly enhances farmers’ livelihood resilience, with an estimated net impact of 17.1%. Specifically, the positive influence on learning capacity is found to be more pronounced than that on buffering and self-organizing capacities. Mechanism analysis suggests that livelihood resilience is bolstered through the dual pathways of “external push” and “endogenous pull.” Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis reveals that models involving vertical industrial chain extension and technology diffusion models yield more substantial impacts among various integration forms. Notably, compared to leading enterprises, participation in cooperatives is found to exert a more significant influence on farmers’ resilience. Consequently, to promote sustainable livelihoods, policy interventions should prioritize the integrated development of rural industries by balancing external resource mobilization with the activation of internal drivers, while remaining vigilant against potential development imbalances arising from different organizational structures. Full article

Volunteering is a practice that has gained significant recognition, offering a range of benefits to both society as a whole and the individuals who participate in it. In the context of people with functional diversity, the practice of volunteering activities has been found to have particular benefits, such as reducing stigma and stereotypes. Despite this recognition, the level of inclusive volunteering remains low. In light of this paradox, the objective of this study is to analyse the main perceived barriers to inclusive volunteering and the extent to which these barriers may affect its practice. To that end, a mixed methodology was employed in this study. The qualitative methodology entailed the conduction of two focus groups, comprising a diverse range of stakeholders from the field of disability in Portugal. The quantitative method involved a questionnaire targeted towards two distinct groups: (i) people with functional diversity (PwFD), and (ii) organisations working with PwFD. This approach is of particular significance given the paucity of studies focusing on the perspectives of people with functional diversity. A variety of techniques were used to analyse the data. These included content analysis for qualitative data and descriptive, bivariate and multivariate analyses for quantitative data. The content analysis revealed significant barriers relating to institutional and cultural factors, as well as personal and family factors. Subsequently, the presence of these barriers was evaluated from the perspectives of PwFD and organisations, with both groups perceiving the barriers as significant. Finally, studying the relationship between perceived barriers and volunteering revealed that organisations’ intentions towards volunteering are not constrained by the level of barriers they perceive to exist. From the perspective of PwFD, it can be seen that, although it is possible to observe the influence of some specific constraints, perceived barriers do not influence current volunteering practices or future intentions. Full article

This paper examines the role of institutional quality in shaping income convergence across European economies over the period 2004–2023. While previous studies frequently assume either linear institutional effects or strong regime-dependent threshold dynamics, this study evaluates whether institutional conditions fundamentally alter the speed of convergence. Using a fixed-effects panel framework with a spline-based specification and an endogenously determined institutional breakpoint, this analysis allows the convergence coefficient to vary across institutional regimes. The results confirm the presence of conditional convergence in the full sample and across regional subgroups. Although an estimated institutional breakpoint marginally improves model fit, formal Wald and bootstrap-based threshold tests do not provide strong evidence of a structural break in the convergence parameter. The speed of convergence remains broadly stable across institutional regimes, suggesting that institutional quality does not function as a binary activation threshold. Instead, institutions appear to operate as conditioning factors influencing the stability and robustness of convergence dynamics rather than triggering discrete regime shifts. Regional estimations reveal heterogeneity in institutional dispersion and growth volatility, particularly in the Western Balkans, yet without fundamental alterations in convergence mechanisms. The findings contribute to the literature by reframing the institutional–convergence nexus toward a moderated nonlinear interpretation, emphasizing structural conditioning rather than regime-dependent convergence. Full article

Tourism Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in underdeveloped regions play a crucial role in driving local economic development and sustaining the tourism ecosystem. Yet they face limitations in innovation capacity and organizational performance. This study aims to develop and test a green innovation model to improve MSME organizational performance and strengthen the tourism ecosystem in East Sumba Regency, Indonesia. This study employed a quantitative approach, collecting data through questionnaires from tourism MSMEs, which were analyzed using Partial Least Squares–Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that green innovation, represented by product value, technology, networking, marketing, and market demand, is positively and significantly associated with organizational performance, which, in turn, is positively associated with perceived ecosystem performance, as reflected in productivity and resilience. These findings support the view that the relationship between green innovation and perceived tourism ecosystem performance operates indirectly and is dependent on strengthening the operational and financial performance of MSMEs. The novelty of this study lies in integrating the empirical PLS-SEM model with an implementation approach, including the development of training modules and the digitalization of learning, in the context of 3T regions (Frontier, Outermost, and Underdeveloped). The limitations of this study include the use of data from a single time period; further research is recommended to use multi-period data to capture the dynamics of change better. Full article

The growing prominence of inclusive development reflects persistent dissatisfaction with traditional growth-centric paradigms that failed to integrate social equity and environmental sustainability. However, the literature discourse of inclusive development lacks systematic analyses of its theoretical and conceptual structures. This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of inclusive development, mapping its intellectual structure, research dynamics, and scholarly contributions. Using bibliographic data from the Scopus and analytical tools including R version 4.5.1 and VOSviewer version 1.6.19, we assess the publication trends and citation patterns. The term first appeared in 1995, emerged slowly, and saw an exponential increase in publications around 2015, coinciding with the Sustainable Development Goals. There are 1871 publications (302 were published in 2024), with over 4500 scholars across 143 countries, publishing in over 1000 sources. The results feature prolific and influential authors, sources, countries, larger geographic regions, and publications. We find disparities among countries, anomalies between influential and prolific contributors, and hints of distinct author groupings. Findings suggest scholars and practitioners risk forming skewed conceptualizations of inclusive development without a clear understanding of the field’s structure. This paper provides such structure, highlighting the value of periodic assessments in consolidating theoretical coherence, strengthening cross-constituency scholarship, and advancing inclusive development’s role in sustainability science. Full article