Eco-innovations according the European Commission determine the future of Europe and stand at the heart of the EU's policies. The focus of the Europe 2020 Strategy is on smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth. Eco-innovations are perceived as a critical for carrying out objectives of the Strategy. To deliver the objectives of the Strategy, Eco-Innovation Action Plan (EcoAP) was adopted by the European Commission in 2011, and now it represents not only a crucial part of the European policy framework for sustainable production and consumption, which supports a set of environmental initiatives but also serves a crucial factor to following the goals of the circular economy. At the same time, it is not clear empirically how eco-innovations are linked with the progress of the EU countries towards sustainable and circular economy.

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The authors insist that a high concentration of political and administrative competencies proved to be more efficient model of state under the conditions of transitional economy when large-scale and unpopular transformations are on the agenda. In spite of “less democratic” administrative model Kazakhstan gained much more impressive economic outcome that formally more democratic Ukraine. Taking into account the most recent developments in both countries one can suppose that the described trends will remain in the future. Namely, the rupture between levels of economic development of Ukraine and Kazakhstan will further broaden.

Water intensive production is a big challenge for economic and environmental problems in post-soviet transitive economies. Intensity of water consumption differs among the geographical regions of targeted region. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the regional inequalities of water consumption in Ukraine as one of post-soviet republic. To examine water resources issues in targeted country, basic mathematical and statistical tools are applied. In order to examine the sustainability of water consumption by social and environmental factors, we take into account all the administrative units of the country under review and conduct a comparative analysis.

The study of the effectiveness of economic diplomacy has become a popular topic in the field of international economic relations. Recent trends are confirmed by a large number of academic studies focusing on the evaluation of the performance of diplomatic and consular offices abroad. This paper represents a new attempt to empirically examine the effectiveness of economic diplomacy using the example of a transition country, based on the activities of Ukrainian foreign representations. Over the last decade, this Eastern European state has experienced significant economic turbulence, political instability and a shift in the vector of foreign economic policy, which is the main impetus for the re-evaluation of its economic diplomacy. Using recent data on export flows, the authors apply a gravity model of trade to assess the impact of economic diplomacy on export activity. The results suggest that embassies are a more relevant means of promoting export flows to low- and middle-income countries.