Equilibrium最新文献

{"title":"Barriers to immigrant entrepreneurship: A causal relationship analysis of the Asian immigrant entrepreneurs in Germany employing the DEMATEL approach","authors":"Gul Shah Sabary, A. Ključnikov","doi":"10.24136/eq.2023.015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24136/eq.2023.015","url":null,"abstract":"Research background: Entrepreneurship and migration are top priorities on many national and international agendas. As a result, entrepreneurship is one of the most popular strategies immigrants use to avoid unemployment in a host country. However, studies lack to discuss causal relationships among key barriers to immigrant entrepreneurs.\u0000Purpose of the article: This study attempts to fill the knowledge gap and investigate the causal relationship between the primary obstacles faced by Asian immigrant entrepreneurs in Germany.\u0000Methods: A predesigned questionnaire was used in face-to-face interviews with Asian business owners in Germany for the study, and the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method of data analysis was used.\u0000Findings & value added: The findings reveal that lack of sufficient financial resources to establish a business, high market competition, and a lack of knowledge of the local language of the host country are the most significant barriers, among others, which may severely hamper Asian immigrant business performance and have a considerable impact on their entrepreneurial decision. At the same time, lack of professional knowledge & skills, problems with rules & regulations, and cultural differences are among the least essential obstacles for Asian immigrant entrepreneurs. The findings show that unfamiliarity with the local language, problems with rules and regulations, cultural differences, and lack of international business experience are associated with the causer category. However, lack of enough capital to establish a venture, lack of professional knowledge and skills, difficulty in access to financial resources, and high market competition relate to the receiver category. This research generates value for policymakers, particularly those participating in migration studies. One of the study's novelties is using the DEMATEL framework for decision-making on barriers to immigrant entrepreneurship in the European context.","PeriodicalId":84667,"journal":{"name":"Equilibrium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41758882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A cross-national study of internationalisation barriers with reference to SME value chain","authors":"Wiesław Urban, K. Krot, A. Tomaszuk","doi":"10.24136/eq.2023.016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24136/eq.2023.016","url":null,"abstract":"Research background: The study responses to the internationalisation issue, one of the essential factors of SMEs growth. Particularly to companies' efforts towards setting international cooperation and circumstances obstructing these struggles. The study takes into consideration that internationalisation in specific areas of company's operations differs noticeably. Similarly, different barriers may arise depending on the areas of the company's value chain that are the focus of the enterprises' internationalisation strategies.\u0000Purpose of the article: This study aims to identify barriers to internationalisation regarding various areas of a company's value chain. The study employs the Value Chain Model by Porter.\u0000Methods: The field data was collected using a questionnaire survey on a sample of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) located in countries in the Baltic Sea region (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland). A multiple regression analysis was performed to determine the impact of barriers on internationalisation.\u0000Finding & value added: The study indicates three areas that are most often the subject of internationalisation in SMEs: operations, outbound logistics and marketing and sales. Barriers differ between value chain areas; however, cultural differences and competition are perceived as the most important hindering factors by companies experienced in internationalisation. At the same time, barriers regarding knowledge and finance diminish when companies becoming more experienced in internationalisation in particular value chain areas. This study is one of few employing the value chain framework to examine internationalisation.","PeriodicalId":84667,"journal":{"name":"Equilibrium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45270452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Human capital convergence in European NUTS 2 regions","authors":"B. Dańska-Borsiak","doi":"10.24136/eq.2023.011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24136/eq.2023.011","url":null,"abstract":"Research background: The role of human capital in modern economy development is as important as that of material growth factors. According to the three-sector model theory, economic growth is associated with the process of labour force leaving the primary sector. The research issue addressed in this paper was the human capital level estimation in European NUTS 2 regions and the relationship between the human capital level and sectoral structure of the economy.\u0000Purpose of the article: The article aimed to verify the hypotheses of absolute and conditional human capital convergence in European NUTS 2 regions. The analysis covered the 2005-2020 period for European NUTS 2 regions and two subgroups: the CEE regions and the Western European regions.\u0000Methods: A composite indicator approach was adopted to measure human capital levels in NUTS 2 regions. In order to verify the absolute and conditional b-convergence hypotheses, dynamic panel data models were estimated. The Blundell and Bond system-GMM estimator with parameter standard errors robust to heteroscedasticity was used.\u0000Findings & value added: The study positively verified the hypotheses of absolute and conditional convergence in each group of regions. Percentages of employees in sectors proved to be the steady-state determinants. The time needed to reduce differences occurring in human capital levels by half (a half-life) was about 11 times greater for the CEE regions than for the Western European ones. The value added of the article lies in proving the relationship between the sectoral structure of employees and the pace of human capital convergence in European NUTS 2 regions.","PeriodicalId":84667,"journal":{"name":"Equilibrium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48760678","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impact of organizational resilience on the quality of public services: Application of structural equation modeling","authors":"Mindaugas Butkus, G. Schiuma, I. Bartuševičienė, O. Rakauskienė, Lina Volodzkiene, Laura Dargenytė-kacilevičienė","doi":"10.24136/eq.2023.014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24136/eq.2023.014","url":null,"abstract":"Research background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, public sector entities encountered extraordinary difficulties in maintaining the delivery of public services. They were ill-equipped to operate in the unpredictable circumstances of the pandemic, causing a significant impact on the accessibility and quality of public services. This scenario also highlighted the importance of the resilience of the public sector, which entails an organization's capacity to function in a crisis setting and uncover opportunities that might not have been evident during normal circumstances.\u0000Purpose of the article: This study aims to assess development trends within public sector resilience and their impact on the quality of public services. As resilience is realized through a three-phase prism - i.e., Planning, Adaptation, and Enhanced Learning - we hypothesize that Adaptation is endogenously interrelated with Planning and positively affects Enhanced Learning, which in turn positively impacts Service Quality.\u0000Methods: Two successive surveys were carried out to examine the links between organizational resilience and Service Quality in the public sector. The first involved interviewing 401 senior managers of the organizations that provide public services in Lithuania to assess their level of organizational resilience. The second survey involved questioning individuals aged 18 and above who had used the services of the previously surveyed organizations. In total, 3,609 public service users were interviewed to gather data on Service Quality. Structural equation modeling was performed to analyze the data collected.\u0000Findings & value added: The results of structural equation modeling revealed that Enhanced Learning positively and significantly affects Service Quality. The findings of this study suggest that the bounce-back stage of organizational resilience, i.e., Adaptation, indirectly affects Service Quality through the bounce-forward stage, i.e., Enhanced Learning. Thus, Enhanced Learning acts both as an accelerator of Service Quality and as a moderator of the effect that other stages of organizational resilience have on Service Quality. The primary contribution of this article is its discovery that Service Quality develops from Enhanced Learning, implying that the optimal approach to service provision is based on both newly acquired knowledge and experience gained during challenging times. This enables organizations to transform their service delivery in response to the realities of changing circumstances, thereby creating opportunities to prepare for future challenges from the standpoint of a new equilibrium.","PeriodicalId":84667,"journal":{"name":"Equilibrium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42255729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A novel approach to estimating the debt capacity of European SMEs","authors":"Michael Karas, M. Režňáková","doi":"10.24136/eq.2023.017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24136/eq.2023.017","url":null,"abstract":"Research background: The concept of debt capacity assumes that a maximum value of debt ratio exists that when exceeded triggers unfavourable consequences, such as drop in market value, default or a change in the business' creditworthiness. With the current state of the art there is a priori no theoretical assurance that such a specific value exists, or rather it is represented by an interval of values. Beyond that, our understanding of debt capacity is often limited to a theoretical approximation by firm-specific factors, while the context of macroeconomic factors, especially those critical for SMEs, is neglected.\u0000Purpose of the article: The aim of this paper is to present a novel approach to estimating SMEs' debt capacity. Further, the aim is to answer the question of what firm-level and macroeconomy conditions lead to exhausting the SMEs' debt capacity and under what conditions a specific value of maximum debt capacity could be estimated.\u0000Methods: To estimate the debt capacity, we suggest a use of an information entropy minimising heuristic and the Minimal Description Length Principle. In this approach, the observed feature space is categorised into several regions. In this case, such a region represents a set of firm- and macroeconomy-specific conditions forming the debt capacity of the SMEs. To the best of our knowledge, such an approach has not yet been used in debt capacity applications.\u0000Findings & value added: We found out that the debt ratio itself provides little explanation of exhausted debt capacity, suggesting that high debt levels are compensated for by other factors. By using the suggested approach, a set of more than 100 different regions was analysed. It was found that in case of five regions (sets of conditions) the debt capacity is exhausted, as the high level of debt has significant distress consequences.","PeriodicalId":84667,"journal":{"name":"Equilibrium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46701365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Google and Apple mobility data as predictors for European tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic: A neural network approach","authors":"B. Nagy, M. Gabor, Ioan-Bogdan Bacoș, M. Kabil, Kai Zhu, L. Dávid","doi":"10.24136/eq.2023.013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24136/eq.2023.013","url":null,"abstract":"Research background: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruptions to the global tourism industry, resulting in significant impacts on both human and economic activities. Travel restrictions, border closures, and quarantine measures have led to a sharp decline in tourism demand, causing businesses to shut down, jobs to be lost, and economies to suffer.\u0000Purpose of the article: This study aims to examine the correlation and causal relationship between real-time mobility data and statistical data on tourism, specifically tourism overnights, across eleven European countries during the first 14 months of the pandemic. We analyzed the short longitudinal connections between two dimensions of tourism and related activities.\u0000Methods: Our method is to use Google and Apple's observational data to link with tourism statistical data, enabling the development of early predictive models and econometric models for tourism overnights (or other tourism indices). This approach leverages the more timely and more reliable mobility data from Google and Apple, which is published with less delay than tourism statistical data.\u0000Findings & value added: Our findings indicate statistically significant correlations between specific mobility dimensions, such as recreation and retail, parks, and tourism statistical data, but poor or insignificant relations with workplace and transit dimensions. We have identified that leisure and recreation have a much stronger influence on tourism than the domestic and routine-named dimensions. Additionally, our neural network analysis revealed that Google Mobility Parks and Google Mobility Retail & Recreation are the best predictors for tourism, while Apple Driving and Apple Walking also show significant correlations with tourism data. The main added value of our research is that it combines observational data with statistical data, demonstrates that Google and Apple location data can be used to model tourism phenomena, and identifies specific methods to determine the extent, direction, and intensity of the relationship between mobility and tourism flows.","PeriodicalId":84667,"journal":{"name":"Equilibrium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41854639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impact of bequest taxation on savings and transfers","authors":"J. Kudła, R. Kruszewski, M. Dudek, K. Walczyk","doi":"10.24136/eq.2023.010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24136/eq.2023.010","url":null,"abstract":"Research background: The paper investigates the impact of bequest taxation on saving and transfers when parents and children make decisions consistently. It complements the predictions of Gale and Perozek's life-cycle modeling (2001) when decisions of parents and children are set independently and can be time-inconsistent.\u0000Purpose of the article: The paper strives to answer the question of whether taxation of bequest harms savings and inter vivos transfers. The previous results indicated that this is possible for some bequest motives. Our results show that this is not likely for the most typical values of parameters.\u0000Methods: The analysis involves economic modeling of four bequest motives: altruistic, paternalistic, accidental, and exchange. The method is based on the overlapping generation approach and life-cycle approach in the case of a paternalistic bequest. The results are supplemented with numerical simulations.\u0000Findings & value added: For the altruistic motive, savings are smaller if interest rates are low relative to the tax rate and the utility of one's consumption is more valuable than the utility of the next generations. For the accidental motive, savings decrease with small interest rates, high taxation and long-life expectancy. For the paternalistic motive, savings decrease when the interest rate and the value of future utility are low. For the exchange motive, savings are higher after a tax increase, but it depends on the value of attention and life expectancy. The general conclusion is that higher bequest taxation hamper saving behavior and may disturb the intergenerational exchange process. The bequest tax should, therefore, be set low, especially for aging populations, in order to induce higher savings and force the young to provide the elderly with higher attention.","PeriodicalId":84667,"journal":{"name":"Equilibrium","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41446031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Relationships between road transport indicators and expenditure of visitors in the context of European countries' tourism competitiveness","authors":"B. Gavurová, M. Rigelský, M. Mikeska","doi":"10.24136/eq.2023.012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24136/eq.2023.012","url":null,"abstract":"Research background: Transport represents a dynamic element in the tourism system. In recent decades, transport has been a subject of research mainly from the point of view of the sustainability of the economic systems and the environmental aspects.\u0000Purpose of the article: This study aimed to quantify the relationships between the selected indicators of road transport development and the expenditure of tourism visitors in the selected European countries in the context of the development of their competitiveness.\u0000Methods: The road transport indicators were applied in the research trajectories: density of road (DNST), hare of road infrastructure investment (SH INF), share of motorways (SH MWY), and indicators of visitor expenditure for business (BTS), leisure (LTS), domestic (DTS) and foreign (VEFS) tourism. In the first phase of the analyses, the countries of the European part of the OECD (N = 27; period of 2010-2018) were divided into two clusters based on the development index (HDI) and the innovation index (GII) through the cluster analysis. The two groups were created - more and less developed countries. The results of the analysis of differences declare that there are differences between these groups in the DNST, SH INF, BTS, LTS, and DTS indicators. The correlation and regression analysis methods were applied to quantify the relationships between the variables.\u0000Findings & value added: The difference between the groups of the countries was also shown in the relationships between the road transport development indicators and visitor spending. In more developed countries, the relationship between the traffic indicators on BTS and DTS was significant. In less developed countries, significant relationships were identified with LST and VEFS. This finding underscores regional disparities and cautions against assuming that what policy guidelines from developed countries will be effective in less developed ones. Therefore, when designing improvement policies, it is vital to consider countries in terms of their level of development.","PeriodicalId":84667,"journal":{"name":"Equilibrium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44696206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Key motivational factors behind Asian immigrant entrepreneurship: A causal relationship analysis employing the DEMATEL approach for Germany","authors":"Gul Shah Sabary, Lukáš Durda, Arif Ibne Asad, A. Ključnikov","doi":"10.24136/eq.2023.009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24136/eq.2023.009","url":null,"abstract":"Research background: Immigrant entrepreneurship remains a key issue for researchers, politicians, and policymakers. It has been widely discussed from different angles among various researchers in recent studies ? particularly in Europe. However, there is a lack of studies to present the motivation of the causal relationship between immigrant entrepreneurs.\u0000Purpose of the article: This study aims to fill the gap and analyze the causal relationship between the motivations of Asian immigrant entrepreneurs in Germany.\u0000Methods: The study was conducted through a face-to-face interview using a predesigned questionnaire from Asian business owners in Germany and the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) approach was applied to analyze the data.\u0000Findings & value added: The results show that capital acquisition, employment, financial problems in the family, and existence opportunities in the market are the factors that have higher priority, and may highly impact the Asian immigrant entrepreneurial decision. On the other hand, relatives or social networks remain the lowest priority factor that encourages Asian immigrants towards self-employment. The study has also found that entrepreneurship in the family, the state support policy for immigrants, low level of education, unfamiliarity with the local language, and dissatisfaction with the previous job belong to the cause group. However, some of the motivating factors relate to the effect group, such as capital acquisition, opportunity in the market, immigrant community ties or social networks, unemployment, and financial problems in the family. The most affected factor among the effect group is unemployment, while immigrant community ties or social network is the least affected factor. This study includes a novel interpretation of the DEMATEL approach that researchers have not yet addressed; therefore, it is highly relevant for policymakers, especially those interested in migration studies. Finding out the main driving forces behind Asian immigrant entrepreneurs in a developed European nation like Germany and how these drivers affect cause-and-effect interactions between them are the contributions that add value to the field.","PeriodicalId":84667,"journal":{"name":"Equilibrium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45819285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The mean reversion/persistence of financial cycles: Empirical evidence for 24 countries worldwide","authors":"Shengnan Lv, Zeshui Xu, Xuecheng Fan, Yong Qin, M. Škare","doi":"10.24136/eq.2023.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.24136/eq.2023.001","url":null,"abstract":"Research background: The globalization trend has inevitably enhanced the connectivity of global financial markets, making the cyclicality of financial activities and the spread of market imbalances have received widespread attention, especially after the global financial crisis.\u0000Purpose of the article: To reduce the negative effects of the contagiousness of the financial cycles, it is necessary to study the persistence of financial cycles and carve out the total connectedness, spillover paths, and sources of risks on a global scale. In addition, understanding the relationship between the financial cycle and economic development is an important way to prevent financial crises.\u0000Methods: This paper adopts the nonlinear smoothing transition autoregressive (STAR) model to extract cyclical and phase characteristics of financial cycles based on 24 countries during 1971Q1?2015Q4, covering developed and developing countries, the Americas, Europe, and Asia regions. In addition, the frequency connectedness approach is used to measure the connectedness of financial cycles and the relationship between the global financial cycle and the global economy.\u0000Findings & value added: The analysis reveals that aggregate financial cycles persist for 13.3 years for smoothed and 8.7 years for unsmoothed on average. The national financial cycles are asynchronous and exhibit more prolonged expansions and faster contractions. The connectedness of financial cycles is highly correlated with systemic crises and contributes to the persistence and harmfulness of shocks. It is mainly driven by short-term components and exhibits more pronounced interconnectedness within regions than across regions. During the financial crisis, the global financial cycle movements precede and are longer than the business fluctuations. Based on the study, some policy implications are presented. This paper emphasizes the impact of systemic crises on the persistence of financial cycles and their connectedness, which contributes to refining research related to the coping mechanisms of financial crises.","PeriodicalId":84667,"journal":{"name":"Equilibrium","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44099105","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}