Julia Korosteleva

The global economy has undergone two significant shifts in recent decades: digitalisation and the green transition. While each has been studied extensively, their intersection remains underexplored. This study reviews metrics for assessing digital and green transformations, both separately and jointly, and identifies key challenges in evaluating their complementarities and trade-offs. By mapping current approaches and offering a comprehensive framework, the paper highlights gaps. The paper proposes a theory-driven metrics framework to support integrated strategies for sustainable innovation and structural transformation toward a green and digital economy.

This paper examines how the ethnic composition of SMEs’ business teams, also in conjunction with their strategic behaviour (including digitalisation, innovation and exporting), affect their employment growth. The study conceptualises different forms and aspects of social capital to develop the theoretical framework and hypotheses. We utilise the UK Office for National Statistics’ Longitudinal Small Business Survey data for the period of 2018–2020 to test our hypotheses. Our study shows that ethnically diverse business teams achieve relatively higher employment growth as compared to more homogeneous teams. Moreover, ethnically diverse business teams that embrace innovation, international expansion, and digitalisation translate these strategies more effectively into increased employment compared to their more homogenous counterparts.

This paper explores the determinants of productivity gaps within the European Union in computing, chemicals, basic metals and food manufacturing – four sectors that vary in terms of the intensity of sectoral R&D. Our analysis reveals that the main causes of these productivity gaps are intensity of unembodied or disembodied R&D activity and R&D embodied in purchased equipment and machinery, and their interplay. While disembodied and embodied R&D are both associated positively to closing productivity gaps, the interaction between the two does not have the same effect. There is no complementarity between these technology acquisition modes, despite both disembodied and embodied technology are crucial for productivity catch up. In a policy context, this suggests possible lack of coordination between R&D policy and technology transfer (that is, foreign direct investment, trade and industrial policy). We show, also, that the productivity gap between ‘peripheral’ (southern and eastern) and ‘north’ EU countries is widening.

Petty administrative corruption (bribery) can be seen as a regional phenomenon and investigated in the spatial context. By applying Heckman selection models with instrumenting to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) Life in Transition Survey (LiTS) data, it is found that larger cities appear more prone to corruption. However, capital cities exhibit lower corruption, owing to differences in social and political structures and government accountability. Furthermore, the paper illustrates the importance of the meso-level social environment, exploring complementarity between bridging (across broader local society by institutional trust) and bonding trust (within more embedded communities) in alleviating bribery.

Poverty reduction remains a critical issue for a vast proportion of the population globally. Substantial body of literature on poverty reduction has focused on the role played by government support and charity institutions, whereas entrepreneurship as a channel for poverty reduction, and the role of gender in shaping this relationship have been under-researched, especially in the context of transition economies. Using the recent wave of the EBRD Life in Transition Survey III (2016) data, this study explores the relationship between poverty alleviation, entrepreneurship and gender. We extend the understanding of the mechanism via which entrepreneurial process is likely to contribute to poverty reduction in this region, distinguishing between self-employment and business ownership, with the latter regarded as Schumpeterian entrepreneurship. The study provides some interesting findings shedding light on the important role women play in shaping the entrepreneurship-poverty relationship.

This study establishes and empirically explores the relationship between knowledge, cultural diversity and various entrepreneurial outcomes across European cities in 2008–2010. We demonstrate that the mechanism of knowledge spillover entrepreneurship is contextual and contend that cultural diversity and knowledge have differential impact on entrepreneurial outcomes across cities and countries. Cities with high cultural diversity provide more opportunities for entrepreneurship in sectors where technology and knowledge play more important role. While in technology-based sectors, we observe a decline in employment, in cities where cultural diversity is moderately high, this effect is counteracted by an increase in demand for skilful labour that is more concentrated in culturally diverse contexts. Implications for regional and national policy makers and international entrepreneurs are offered.

Entrepreneurial dynamics and higher education institutions in the post-Communist world. Regional Studies. This study draws on the institutional and regional entrepreneurship literature to develop a conceptual framework that analyses the impact of higher education institutions on entrepreneurial dynamics. It is used to examine the cities of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) during the period 1995–2008. Extending the multi-pillar institutional concept, it is found that higher education institutions play a prominent role in fostering entrepreneurial dynamics in CIS cities through multiple channels, including human capital development, cultivating a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship, affecting the perceptions of the knowledge and skills needed to start up a successful business, and knowledge spillovers.

We develop entrepreneurship and institutional theory to explain variation in different types of entrepreneurship across individuals and institutional contexts. Our framework generates hypotheses about the negative impact of higher levels of corruption, weaker property rights and especially intellectual property rights, and a larger state on entrepreneurs who plan to grow faster. We test these hypotheses using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor surveys in 55 countries for 2001-2006, applying a multilevel estimation framework. We confirm our main hypotheses but we find no significant impact from intellectual property rights.

This article examines the financial development of Belarus, with special emphasis on 1996–2002, when the financial sector was restrained by pervasive government controls. Belarus is of particular interest as, despite no economic restructuring, annual growth has averaged 7% since 1997. It has been argued that monetary stimulation of investment through interest rate ceilings, directed credit and preferential loans revived growth. This article investigates whether a repressive financial policy adopted by the authorities in the late 1990s led to financial deepening and increased the share of savings allocated to investment.