Green and sustainable finance, corporate social responsibility and financial and non-financial performance are attracting widespread interest due to the challenging times that the business environment is currently facing. Moreover, green and sustainable finance, corporate social responsibility, and intellectual and human capital have become central issues in measuring organizations’ success, competitive advantage and influence on the marketplace. This scientific paper seeks to address the relationship between corporate social responsibility, intellectual capital and performance, providing valuable insights and relevant evidence from a Romanian business environment. The questionnaire method was used for the targeted research objectives, which referred to: (a) Romanian organizations and local community understanding of green and sustainable finance, corporate social responsibility and intellectual capital; (b) corporate social responsibility actions taken by Romanian organizations and the local community; (c) main drivers of corporate social responsibility and intellectual capital in Romanian organizations; and (d) ways to enhance financial and non-financial performance of Romanian organizations with the aid of corporate social responsibility and intellectual capital. The findings support the idea of a strong relationship between corporate social responsibility, intellectual capital and performance in the Romanian business environment. Our work shows that, broadly speaking, Romanian entities operate on a socially responsible level, being aware of the importance and the advantages brought by both corporate social responsibility and intellectual capital when it comes to enhancing profit, productivity and performance. Our results are highly encouraging and may be validated by a larger sample size.

This paper discusses the major trends in scholarship about the role of FDI and exports on economic growth, the effect of tax policies on FDI, the formation of the economic catch up of the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region and the determinants of FDI inflows in CEE nations. I am specifically interested in how previous research investigated the influence of FDI on host country economic growth, the inward FDI stock as a percentage of GDP, the features and restrictions of fiscal schemes in CEE economies and the institutional soundness displayed in policies towards FDI. The analysis presented in this paper contributes to research on FDI as a mechanism in the transition to the market, the dissimilarities in the FDI-assisted development methods among the CEE nations, the impact of FDI inflows for productivity convergence in CEE and the current slowing of growth in emerging Europe.

Abstract:The recent transformation of the national economies has raised numerous theoretical and practical aspects in measuring economic growth, welfare, environmental performance, and competitiveness, representing a challenging research topic within the context of economic paradigm transformation. Despite its importance, a fully operational model to be used in any context has not yet been designed. The main aim of this paper is to evaluate and analyze the macroeconomic dimension of the three determinants of sustainable competitiveness: the economic environment, the social environment, and the natural environment, at both the European and Romanian levels. This paper used the Hierarchical Clustering methodology, aiming at evaluating the global competitiveness in terms of a sustainable development model, using four indices: Human Development Index, Environmental Performance Index, Global Competitiveness Index, and GDP per capita. The clusters were designed on the basis of the role of the indices in assessment of the sustainable performances of the countries and also of the possible convergences between them. The results could sustain the conclusion that these indices are not able to offer an exhaustive image of the sustainable performances assessment. A new complex indicator could be considered in order to design a convergence model for the EU member states.

Analysing the impact of agricultural performance on foreign trade concentration and competitiveness defines an important step in identifying the opportunities, challenges and proactive measures in designing a functional and marked based agricultural model. The scope of this study is to investigate the evolution of Romania’s the foreign trade competitiveness and its concentration on main destinations during 2007–2016. In this context, in the paper are identified and investigated some of the competitiveness’ mutations arisen from the Romania’s trade flows concentration and restructuration in relation with 26 of the European Union member states. It was used a unique dataset on agro -food trade output and concentration across EU countries to construct measures of trade competitiveness. The results obtained suggest the existence of a dual relationship of the Romanian agriculture competitiveness and its dependence on the EU economic area, by the concentration of the commercial relationships.

Environmental taxation represents a key influence on sustainable development in post-transition countries. Romania has experienced important transformations of environmental policy, including taxation, due to sustained reliance on traditional energy sources to satisfy its energy needs. The aim of this paper is to show a possible causal relationship between the Romanian GDP and several explanatory variables related to taxation of environmental damage and energy generation and consumption in the country. In order to do this, the authors make use of several statistical tests to verify the existence of a meaningful relationship between economic variables expressed in time series. The study has also attempted to identify the influence of environmental taxation on ensuring green economic development, starting from the premise that for emergent economies these taxes provide both a GDP increase and prevent environmental degradation by decreasing the pollution and environmentally harmful supplies and practices.