Recent discussions on the definition of growth in terms of welfare beyond GDP suggest that it is of urgent need to develop new approaches for measuring the economic performance of the firms and national economies. The new concepts should take into account simultaneously economic as well as social and environmental goals. We first discuss several approaches to productivity measures. Then we extend the Data Envelopment Analysis models for environment to measure the so called eco-efficiency and for social indicators to take into account the social performance. For an illustration, we perform the analysis of 30 European countries in the year 2010. In the last section we discuss the possibilities of inter-temporal analysis of proposed models and of their use in ex-ante evaluation of different policy scenarios.

This paper analyses how terrorist attacks and high inflows of immigrants impact public attitudes towards immigrants from outside the European Union (EU). It makes an original contribution by analysing both effects in tandem, using an extended longitudinal framework to assess both shorter and longer term impacts and taking into account the role of uncertainty. Ordered probit regression models are applied to data from nine consecutive Eurobarometer (EB) surveys to examine impacts of 25 terrorist attacks in Western Europe in 2014-2018. Attacks with higher number of deaths significantly increase negative attitudes to immigrants although the effect fades over time. However, the 2015 migration crisis had a significant, greater and more sustained impact on attitudes towards immigrants than terrorist attacks. The differences in attitudes to migrants in the EU15 countries and post-communist countries provide support for the assumptions of the intergroup contact theory rather than the group threat theory.

This paper examines changing regional patterns of energy and emission efficiency in the Slovak regions in the period of 2008–18. Firstly; we review literature on key approaches to evaluating energy and emission efficiency; followed by discussing the pros and cons of specific methods. A slacks-based model of data envelopment analysis is applied in order to investigate changing patterns of energy and emission efficiency in 79 Slovak regions (LAU 1). Thereafter; changes in energy and emission efficiency are associated with policy interventions supported by the European Structural and Cohesion Funds (ESCF) in the period of 2011–15. The evaluation found no support for the hypothesis with regard to the positive impact of the ESCF on the increase in energy and emission efficiency. Combined support from three ESCF policy measures (€606.44m) was substantial; but accounted for a mere 6.3% of the total firm expenditure on product and process innovations in the period of 2007–15 (€9,573m). Productivity-boosting technological innovations and structural changes in the Slovak economy (a shift towards industries with a lower consumption of energy but a higher production of gross value added GVA) were major drivers of trends in energy and emission efficiency. If an increase in energy (emission) efficiency; rather than energy savings (a decrease in pollution), is a major objective of sustainable development policies; then innovation-oriented policies and changes in the structure of economic activities should be preferred to schemes supporting simple energy-saving (emission-cutting) projects