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Climate change presents a substantial impediment for the global community and prompts policymakers worldwide to prioritize environmental goals when defining national development strategies. Prioritizing these goals is particularly challenging for governments of developing economies still relying on fossil fuels, foreign capital, and industry contribution to GDP. This study examines the relationships between carbon dioxide emissions, industry value added, financial development, and electricity generation in 15 Central and Eastern European countries from 1995 to 2021. To achieve this objective, we examined stationarity and cointegration and employed a vector error correction model to investigate causalities between the variables, along with a variance decomposition analysis. Our findings suggest that the short-run unidirectional causalities exist from industry value-added to carbon dioxide emissions and from carbon dioxide emissions to financial development and electricity generation. Long-term causality exists between carbon dioxide emissions and industry value added. The findings shed light on the challenges and opportunities these countries face in transitioning to climate neutrality and meeting the decarbonization targets. Within this context, the findings underscore the significance of crafting customized strategies for these economies to navigate the complex landscape of climate change while promoting sustainable industrial, electricity and financial sector development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to find out if the high economic growth rates achieved by the CEE countries are based either on consumption or on investments, considering many exogenous factors that impact on the economic growth and how these factors can contribute to the employment process in the CEE economies to stress if these trends of economic growth and employment are sustainable in the long run. We performed two Panel Least Squares and Pool Least Squares estimations to determine the impact of the exogenous variables on the economic growth (as GDP per capita growth) and on the unemployment rate in the short and long run, depending on the lags of the exogenous variables used in the analysis. We used yearly data series during 2004–2017 for eight selected CEE countries. Our results show that private consumption is positively related with economic growth in the short run, but it doesn't support the job creation process, in the same way as the savings rate can't determine positive effects on the employment. Public spending is strongly and negatively correlated with economic growth and positively correlated with the unemployment rate in the CEE region, while the net export is weakly impacting on the economic growth in the CEE region and doesn't support the employment process in this area. The impact of the domestic investments on the economic growth is weaker in the CEE area than the impact of both private and public spending, but they are positively correlated with the economic growth and negatively correlated with the unemployment rate, while the correlation of the foreign direct investments (FDIs) with both economic growth and unemployment is very weak, as it is the case of net exports. We conclude that the economic growth in the CEE area is mainly based on the private consumption in the short run but the private consumption doesn't support the job creation process either in the long run or in the short run. The qualitative factors included in the analysis by using global competitiveness index (corruption control, bureaucracy, infrastructure quality, governance effectiveness, political stability, rule of law factors, property rights, markets efficiency, etc.) and corruption perception index are strongly and positively correlated with the economic growth and negatively correlated with the unemployment rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pollution, war and energy crisis are the CEE countries' most important global actual issues. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the impact of political stability and electricity price in 11 CEE countries in the period 2007–2021 to anticipate the effect of these factors on pollution in times of political and energy crisis. The common results based on DOLS/FMOLS and CCEMG estimations indicate that political stability enhances CO2 emissions, while higher electricity prices for non-household consumers reduce pollution. An inverted-U pattern was observed in the relationship between growth and pollution, while renewable energy consumption is the most powerful tool to reduce CO2 emissions. These results are the starting point for policy recommendations. [Display omitted] • Political stability enhances CO2 emissions. • Higher electricity prices for non-household consumers reduce pollution. • Renewable energy consumption reduces pollution. • An inverted-U pattern in the growth-pollution nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Europe 2020 strategy is the EU strategy for sustainable and inclusive growth, for fighting the structural weaknesses of the European economies, and for improving their competitiveness. In this paper, we determined the most important ratios of the Europe 2020 Strategy impacting on economic performance expressed as the growth of the GDP per capita, and on economic competitiveness expressed as the share of the countries’ exports in total world exports for some selected Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania) using co-integration tests and OLS panel estimations with a dataset between 2004 (after four of these selected countries acceded to EU) and 2015 (the latest available data for all the ratios we used in our analysis). Our findings show that the tertiary level of education is the most important factor, positively correlated with both endogenous variables mentioned above. Other important factors for achieving the economic performance and competitiveness goals are the school dropout ratio, the share of renewable energy in final energy consumption, and the employment rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase of the foreign property in the CEE countries took place at the same time with the increase of the concentration on the banking market. The foreign countries contributed to the highest concentration level of the banking market through two channels: the acquisition by the foreign banks of some local institutions and the consolidation of the local (autochthonous) institutions. Plus, the capital markets have developed considerably in the CEE countries, offering the firms alternative financing sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]