The insurance industry has an important role in the economy, being constantly focused on diversifying product portfolios and dispersing risks. Since the uncertainty, the asymmetric information, the current economic and social-political challenges affect the economic performance and competitiveness on the insurance market, it is necessary to focus on the evaluation of the technical efficiency of the players. One of the most complex analytical research tools with increased utility that can be applied to measure the efficiency is the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Our work is designed to analyze the performance of a sample made up of the ten main players in the insurance industry in Romania. Assuming a predefined set of five inputs (total expenses, provisions, average number of employees, total placements and intangible assets) and one output (total income) selected from the firms’ balance sheets, we calculate the efficiency scores with the help of DEA techniques for each year from 2016 to 2020. Our results show that Allianz and City are the most efficient firms regardless of the model type VRS or CRS, while Groupama and Omniasig fail to operate at an optimal level in any of the analyzed periods.

The semiconductor industry is a key driver of technological progress due to essential parts that are integrated in widely used electronic devices nowadays. Given its critical importance, this industry is constantly evolving in order to adapt to market requirements led by fast-paced consumer trends. Meanwhile, the global supply chain is undergoing pressure from other conditional factors, mostly the pandemic and trade restrictions in recent times. With potential to grow due to digitalization, semiconductor companies can be an attractive option to invest in. Building an investment portfolio is a challenging process regardless of the risk preference of an investor. Based on the concept of diversification, combining low-correlated assets from various industries can lead to an overall efficient portfolio with acceptable risk levels. The aim of this study is to analyze the evolution of eight selected semiconductor stocks from 2018 to 2022 and evaluate their relative performance to the benchmark index by using descriptive statistics and risk metrics drawn from their daily returns. Having an insight on the results obtained from historical data allows us to examine whether diversifying portfolios with semiconductor stocks represents an opportunity, mainly contributing to a pre-selection of stocks to mitigate the risk and support the investment decision.

The existence of several different degrees of restructuring, uneven dynamics, the transition from a natural monopoly to a competitive market with new strategic and economic opportunities are among the defining features of the natural gas market that transform it into an important pillar of the economy.

International trade is an important pillar of the modern economy. Beyond its benefits, the global market generates divergencies among trade partners that can be escalated into trade disputes. Notable interest has arisen in using network analysis to formally describe interactions with concepts derived from the graph theory. As we have noticed a less explored area on the graphical representation of trade dispute data, the purpose of this paper is to build, visualize, and analyze the trade disputes as a weighted network. We use data about trade disputes provided by the Word Trade Organization from 1995 to 31 January 2022 as this is a major regulatory body within the multilateral trading system. Our aim is to address the question on which countries are using the most the dispute settlement mechanism. Based on the association complainant – respondent, we map these interactions to obtain a weighted network that includes 75 countries, 247 unidirectional country pairs and 652 trade disputes. The results indicate the dominance of the United States as the main hub followed by the European Union and a core-periphery structure of the trade dispute network with less participation from smaller countries. Our study is a general assessment of trade disputes which contributes to identifying patterns on the positional changes of countries and their involvement as complainant and respondent respectively in international dispute settlement.

Cereal grains are basic nutrients in the human diet. Given the production capacity gap between countries, food security is subject to global challenges. The Russian invasion of Ukraine from February 2022 has inevitably raised concerns on the resilience of the agro-food system. In this paper, we use network theory to examine the export flows of the European producers of wheat, maize, and barley. Based on annual data from the United Nations Comtrade database, we build specific weighted and directed networks to comparatively assess the dynamics of cereal exporting patterns. We employ centrality metrics for network statistics and modularity for community detection. The central hub for all three cereals remained unchanged. Our results show the following core countries Russia for wheat, France for barley and Ukraine for maize. Their main export destination is also the same, from Russia to Türkiye, France to China and Ukraine to China respectively. Compared to the previous year, several destinations including low-income countries worldwide did not appear as recipients of the Ukrainian exports, but additional countries located in Europe and interconnected by land emerged as partners. This study provides a general assessment of the European exports to support a better understanding of the community structure under the Russo-Ukrainian conflict setting.