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Objective: The aim of this article is to investigate if Romanian rural localities hosting or situated within a natural WHS (World Heritage Site) have benefited from their situation and developed the local rural tourism. Research Design & Methods: Since the topic of this article had not been previously investigated for Romania, the research was constructed as a case study, exploring the available secondary data on tourism supply and demand. Within the case study, a combination of empirical methods was used in order to investigate two ratios (the survival rate and continuity ratio) constructed to study the sustainability of the offer of local tourism. Findings: Romanian rural localities hosting or being part of a WHS do not exploit properly their tourist potential. However, these localities are in a better position than common rural localities from the viewpoint of a sustainable tourism offer. Implications & Recommendations: Further studies on tourism demand and tourism governance for WHS localities are needed in order to help local governments to develop authentic and sustainable tourism for these areas. Contribution & Value Added: Given the sparse academic Romanian literature focusing on WHSs, this study contributes to this field and opens new avenues for research. Furthermore, the findings of this study add to the existing international literature by supporting the idea that simply the presence of a WHS in rural areas is not a panacea for promoting tourism.

The sub-sovereign finance importance for emerging and frontier markets is constantly growing since the beginning of 21st century. The change in regulations governing Romanian municipalities source of financing in 1998, allowed local governments to access alternative financing sources, mainly for medium and long term investment projects, through bond issuance. A secondary market for municipal bond trading was launched at Bucharest Stock Exchange at the end of November 2001 and the exchange also offers a platform for announcement and subscriptions of municipal bond public offerings. Thus, more than a decade later, the Romanian municipal bond market segment remains in a premature stage of development. The paper presents a comprehensive data set of Romanian municipal bond sector since it was launched in November 2001 until December 2013. The paper also reveals the level of Bucharest Stock Exchange (hereafter abbreviated as BVB) municipal bond segment underdevelopment after 12 years of trading. The findings highlight the factors influencing the trading decisions and might represent some suggested ides to be considered by their municipal bond issuers and the financial intermediaries assisting them. The investigations show that coupon and risk premium play only marginal roles in trading decisions hinting toward an unsophisticated market, dominated by a small number of institutional investors which rather treasure the scarce municipal bond offer. The absence of rating and the inappropriate correlation mainly between the risk premium and the economic potential of the issuer impair on further developments. The lack of sophistication displayed by the Romanian financial system, which also does not provide credit enhancements dedicated to local government, along with a thin domestic investor base are factors fencing, at least for the moment, the possibilities to overcome the rating problem and the offer diversity problem.

The present paper aims to present the level of development reached by Romanian Treasury bond market segment at Bucharest Stock Exchange. A trial will be made to identify the determinants that contributed to the current level of development of domestic secondary government bond market and the factors that can generate a further (and improved) development. The analysis will be descriptive (the data series available for Romania are short), based on the secondary data offered by Bucharest Stock Exchange.

The present paper represents a socio-economic interdisciplinary perspective and is the result of a study on the way in which social responsibility in business is turned from a theoretical approach, one highly promoted by the European Union, at present, into a concrete action. We have carried out a qualitative research, based on an in-depth interview, on the opinions of 46 managers from a provincial area, the Mures County and from the top business area in Romania – Bucharest. We have reached three main conclusions. Firstly, the interviewees do not correlate the current problems of the Romanian society with active entrepreneurship; they do not find real solutions to these problems through entrepreneurial activities. Secondly, the subjects appreciate that social responsibility actions are mainly performed for economic reasons. Thirdly, the implementation of social responsibility is connected to the size of the enterprise. Big companies are more likely to develop SR actions within a strategic vision.

The present paper aims to present the level of development reached by Romanian government bond market segment, as part of the country financial market. The analysis will be descriptive (the data series available for Romania are short), based on the secondary data offered by the official bodies involved in the process of issuing and trading the Romanian government bonds (Romanian Ministry of Public Finance, Romanian National Bank and Bucharest Stock Exchange), and also on secondary data provided by the Federation of European Stock Exchanges. To enhance the market credibility as a benchmark, a various combination of measures is necessary; among these measures are mentioned: the extension of the yield curve; the issuance calendars in order to improve transparency; increasing the disclosure of information on public debt issuance and statistics; holding regular meetings with dealers, institutional investors and rating agencies; introducing a system of primary dealers; establishing a repurchase (repo) market in the government bond market. These measures will be discussed based on the evolution presented inside the paper. The paper conclude with the fact that, until now, the Romanian government bond market did not provide a benchmark for the domestic financial market and that further efforts are needed in order to increase the government bond market transparency and liquidity.

The global economic crisis, which had a strong impact on virtually all states of the world, brought additional challenges to the public sector. The governments had to choose between two alternatives: to decrease public expenditure by adopting austerity measures (option chosen by most EU Member States) or to increase public investments, in an attempt to stimulate economic growth (alternative preferred and supported by the US and Great Britain). The paper at hand aims to analyze the public expenditure policy in Romania, as a result of the economic conditions imposed by the crisis, with a focus on the relationship between the incomes collected from taxes on labour and the public expenditure with the personnel employed within public institutions. We shall analyze and compare the figures regarding public expenditure for the wages of persons working in the public sector in the years prior to the crisis and following the adoption of the austerity measures. At the same time, we shall analyze the corresponding numbers regarding the amounts collected from taxes on labour. The goal of the paper is to identify the possible connection between the reduction of personnel expenses and the decrease of the budgetary deficit, which was the intended purpose of the austerity measures in the field of public employees’ salaries. Since the labour tax is computed on the basis of the salary earned, we expect both the expenses with the personnel and the amounts collected from labour tax, to decrease. However, this decrease will be in different percentages. The paper will analyze if the final balance between expenses with salaries and labour tax is positive or negative, in other words, if the austerity measures helped improve the budgetary deficit or deepened it. The final part of the research focuses on a comparative analysis between the EU Member States, with respect to the levels of taxation on labour, the percentage of labour tax in the GDP, and the public expenditure with the personnel, in an attempt to show if there are certain similarities or differences between EU and/or NISPAcee States.

In this paper, we shall expose the risks inherent to leasing operations, undertaken by the lessor, and their influence on establishing the debtor installment afferent to these operations. Within the theoretical works regarding the establishing of periodic rental payments, two types of risks were identified: the credit risk and the residual value risk. The influence of risks inherent to leasing operations, for the lessor, will be analyzed by means of two models: Miller and Upton’s model and Grenadier’s model. This analysis will allow us to notice the heterogeneity of lessors’ offers, which justify, on the one hand, through the different profile of the lessee enterprises, and, on the other hand, through the nature of the asset financed.

The present research is the first to concentrate only on the EU 10 frontier markets and their internal diversification potential for the equity market segments. The EU 10 frontier markets present all five characteristics identified by the academic literature for the (equity) frontier markets. A sixth characteristic was identified and added for the EU 10 frontier securities markets. The results show that the EU 10 frontier markets exhibit internal diversification potential and therefore can present interesting investing opportunities for domestic and international investors. The internal diversification potential seems to be lower in the cases of Latvia and Malta, with trading concentrated around the pharmaceutical and banking sectors, respectively. Romania has a peculiar position with an apparently limited internal diversification potential. These general results complete and enhance, from an inside-out point of view, the findings of partial integration of the EU 10 frontier markets and the overall conclusion that they present diversification opportunities for international portfolios.

The present paper continues the investigations on RASDAQ market initiated by Pop et al. (2014) by extending the period under scrutiny to December 2014. The changes that took place during 2014 are highlighted and the hypothesis formulated by Pop et al. (2014) reinvestigated. The current findings confirm the hypothesis previously formulated. RASDAQ has been under the influence of Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) and overshadowed by it; therefore RASDAQ was only secondarily considered as an alternative for portfolio investments. The January effect and the weekend effect became even weaker by extending the investigation period confirming the fact that RASDAQ was rather ignored by portfolio investors. By adding new independent variables in investigating the trades’ variability, it was reinforced that RASDAQ was used mainly by the existing shareholders involved in the ownership concentration process. Further, the paper tried to establish how many companies would be interesting to be transferred at BVB Standard tier. The investigation took into consideration the similarity of company profiles based on market capitalization, trades within 52 weeks, debt to equity ratio, net profit or loss ratio, and Tobin’s q. A number of 39 companies were identified, a little higher than that mentioned by BVB general director. Overall, the current investigations confirm the main conclusion of Pop et al. (2014) that the RASDAQ played its role as intermediary of ownership concentration for the listed companies

The re-opening of Bucharest Stock Exchange in November 1995 and the start of RASDAQ in October/November 1996 were both prompted by the Mass Privatization Program results. RASDAQ was established as an alternative equity exchange where the bulk of the 6,000 privatized companies should be listed, according to the Romanian regulations related to privatization. The present paper will present a survey over RASDAQ covering the period since its start in November 1996 until the end of December 2013. It will also try to answer, in the end, what RASDAQ future might be taking into consideration the survey findings in combination with empirical investigations regarding the influence of Bucharest Stock Exchange over RASDAQ, the presence/ absence of anomalies and the quality of listed companies. The findings implies that RASDAQ was rather a market preferred by those investors who were involved in the ownership concentration process and was only secondary considered as an alternative for portfolio investments. For the current period, the free float of a company, the transparency of the respective company and the ownership structure seems to be factors that play a role in the trading decision of portfolio investors. The findings also support the idea that despite the good intentions of offering a fair a transparent trading platform for million of shareholders, the combination of bad decisions and relax regulation created the mix of factors that eroded potential investors’ confidence in RASDAQ. The tainted image gained during the first period of its existence followed RASDAQ until the present with the unavoidable consequences of investors’ interest in continuous decline.

Liquidity is an important feature for any domestic bond market, being associated with a well organized market. A liquid secondary government bond market must be of interest for any frontier economy policy-makers given the important benefits. The present paper is the first to investigate the liquidity of government bond secondary market in Romania, included in the subgroup of frontier securities market. The paper use multivariate empirical analysis using the data set available at Bucharest Stock Exchange for the period August 2008, when the secondary market for government bonds was launched, and December 2013. Since this is the first paper trying to measure the liquidity of BVB government bond market segment, a high number of proxies were first selected in order to capture all the liquidity dimensions. Also five factors were identified to influence the majority of these proxies. In the end, four factors of the initial five proved to have an increased explanatory power over the liquidity proxies. Further, the number of twelve liquidity proxies should be reduced and a PCA was conducted in order to extract a smaller number. The final result indicates a number of four liquidity proxies that captured in a satisfactory manner all the liquidity dimensions. The results suggests that the Romanian Ministry of Finance should pay a special attention to these four proxies and to the idemtfied factors influencing them in order to increase the government bond segment liquidity at Bucharest Stock Exchange.

The present papers presents the problem of tax burden at the level of European Union between 2001 and 2006. The first part presents various opinions regarding the tax burden. The second part focused on the analysis of overall tax burden evolution over the period 2001-2006. The third part is focused on the overall picture of tax burden during 2006 and makes an overview regarding the three pillars that support the European fiscal system.

Brealy and Young (1980, p. 1249) remind us: “…the use of any lease valuation model involves a general theory of capital structure”. If a user purchase an asset with a given combination of cash and borrowing, there is a clear impact on corporate capital. The impact is not so clear if the user leases the asset. A brief review of the evolution of theories on corporate capital structure – presented by Myers (1984) will assist in our discussion of how leasing analysis “involves a general theory of capital structure”.

The cohesion policy of the European Union reflects the communitarian financial priorities. As all public policies of the EU, the cohesion policy is financed from the EU budget. Therefore, it has a major role in shaping the budget. The paper analyzes the interdependence between the cohesion policy and the EU budget, indicating the direct connection between the expenses made from the communitarian budget and the architectural design of the cohesion policy. The paper presents the parallel evolution of the European Union budget, on the one hand, and of the cohesion policy, on the other hand. At the same time, the changes brought about by the accession of new Member States are described and analyzed, as well as the multi-annual financial programming periods. The focus of the research and analysis will fall on the 2000-2006 and 2007-2013 financial frameworks. Finally, the paper will attempt to identify the possible changes predicted for the 2014-2020 period, brought about by the new challenges faced by the European Union, both in terms of budgetary construction and regarding the architecture, objectives and programs of the cohesion policy. Hence, the dynamism and mutual influence in the relationship between the cohesion policy and the EU budget will be once more demonstrated.

The presence of branded hotels in Romania remains relatively modest after two decades since the first Sofitel (Accor Hotels) entered the market. Thus, the number of branded hotels increased since 2005 when they were first investigated. The present study investigates the RevPAR of the Romanian hotels that have joined an international brand, either hard (franchising and management contracts) or soft (affiliation), and the hotel operators’ net financial results over a five year period 2012-2016. The results of this exploratory study reveal that the most notorious brands operating in Romania are also those generating the highest RevPAR. Further, the results show that operating a brand outside Bucharest (mainly a hard brand) proves to generate constantly net profit for most of the respective hotel operators, despite a RevPAR below the European average. This finding suggests that the brand notoriety generates an increased occupancy rate. The results indirectly point out that most of the branded hotels’ operators seem to struggle on the crowded Bucharest hotel market enhancing the idea of internal inefficiencies. Given the structure of the Romanian hotel industry, the partnership with an international brand seems to be worth the effort mainly if the brand is appropriately chosen taking into consideration the hotel location and size.

The present paper continues the studies of Pop et al. (2014) and Pop et al. (2015) and completes the previous studies by presenting a brief survey of RASDAQ’s entire active life, the profile of RASDAQ indices, and focusing on the last 911 RASDAQ listed companies: their profile and their decision to be transferred on other market segments or to be delisted. The results of the present study confirms, from another viewpoint, the findings of Pop et al. (2014) and Pop et al. (2015): RASDAQ most important role was to assist the ownership concentration process, thus this role was fulfilled much later compared with the similar markets that existed within the former communist countries. The fulfillment of this role was confirmed by: a) no important trading activity for most of the listed companies between 2013 and 2015; b) weak January and weekend effects; c) low free float. Furthermore, by choosing to put an end to RASDAQ, the Romanian authorities acknowledged the fulfillment of this role and the fact that a radical transformation of this controversial market was almost impossible.

If the asset is very costly, it may be convenient to arrange a leveraged lease, in which the cost of the leased asset is financed by issuing debt and equity claims against the asset and the future lease payments. If one knows the financing mix that will be used by the lessor, the rate of return on the lease payments, and the (lower) rate of return received by debt holders in the contract, then it is possible to estimate the required rate of return on equity invested in leveraged leases.

Under the combined pressure of increased urbanization, fiscal adjustments and decentralization, central governments were pushed towards accepting the idea of local government accessing the private finance sources for their public infrastructure and service development investments. While the importance of borrowing increases for local developments, the main challenge many small municipalities have to face is the difficulty to access private financing sources. One obstacle is related to the creditworthiness of the municipal debtor or bond issuer. Sub-national governments can overcome the problem of creditworthiness through the use of credit enhancement mechanisms or techniques. The present paper is the first to discuss the situation of credit enhancements for Romanian municipal bond financing, its consequences and the path that might be followed for their further development. The absence of appropriate credit enhancements can be considered among the factors that contributed to the underdevelopment of the Romanian municipal bond market segment mainly between 2011 and 2014. In order to improve the municipal bond market profile, Romanian local governments should not ignore credit enhancements for any future bond issue and a combination of internal credit enhancements and bond pooling, as external credit enhancements seem to provide a feasible solution.

The global economic crisis, which had a strong impact on virtually all states of the world, brought additional challenges to the public sector. The governments had to choose between two alternatives: to decrease public expenditure by adopting austerity measures (option chosen by most EU Member States) or to increase public investments, in an attempt to stimulate economic growth (alternative preferred and supported by the USA and Great Britain). The paper aims to analyze the public expenditure policy in Romania, as a result of the economic conditions imposed by the crisis, with a focus on the public expenditure with the personnel employed within public institutions. The paper will analyze and compare the figures regarding public expenditure for the wages of persons working in the public sector in the years prior to the crisis and following the adoption of the austerity measures. The goal of the paper is to identify the possible connection between the reduction of personnel expenses and the decrease of the budgetary deficit, which was the intended purpose of the austerity measures in the field of public employees’ salaries.