No abstract

A global trend of economic development is the transition to the formation of a new economic paradigm – the information economy. Ability to generate knowledge and innovation is a prerequisite for improving the competitiveness of the country and its regions; as well, it determines the pace of their social and economic development. In this context, the need to determine the levels of the development of the information economy and its structural components (educational, research and innovation) in the regions of the country is actualized. The purpose of the article is to develop and test a methodological toolkit for assessing the development of the information economy in terms of its structural components, that will allow for the formation of regional clusters by the intensity of educational, innovation and research components, and to identify priority vectors for stimulating the development of the information economy at the macro- and meso-economic levels. When developing methodological tools, the authors proceeded from existing methodological approaches in the world, the possibility of adapting them to national specifics, as well as the potential of statistical bases. In order to cluster the regions of Ukraine by the development level of educational, innovation and research components of the information economy, the k-means algorithm is used. The conducted cluster analysis showed that processes of the formation of the information economy in Ukraine are developing unevenly and are in the stage of formation. More regions of the state fall into the cluster of problematic regions with low levels of the development of educational, innovation and research components; leadership in the development level of the information economy is demonstrated by Kharkiv region, assigned to the cluster of regions with the intensive development of the information economy; in addition, a cluster of perspective regions with the level of the moderate development of the information economy is highlighted. The research made it possible to find out the main problems and identify areas of regional imbalances in the development of the information economy, including in terms of its structural components. In conclusions, the authors proposed directions to improve the approaches to the government control of the processes of the information economy evolvement, based on specific features of the regions, their smart specialization, actual capacities and the achieved level of the development of the information economy components.

Agriculture is one of the important sectors in Romania in terms of expanding the cultivated agricultural areas, the number of people working in this field and contribution of the branch to the national economy. Considering the socio-economic dimension of the branch, agriculture represents a viable opportunity in Romania given the qualitative land fund and the pedoclimate’s characteristic still favorable for obtaining financial performance in agriculture. Financial management is a challenge for economic operators in the agriculture. Due to the seasonal character of it, the managerial act of managing cash flow tables is difficult, and managers reach a high rate of indebtedness of the company. The seasonal stage of storage and trading of stocks represents for managers another challenge of financial management and brings with it randomized elements regarding the efficiency of the managerial act in the agricultural sector. The aim of the paper is to conceptualize a modern financial management model timed in agriculture to reduce financial pressure and allow managers to gain more efficiency in managing cash flow charts. The research uses empirical and analytical study methods including literature review, analysis of economic efficiency indicators obtained by agricultural companies in Romania, study of financial projections to identify significant vulnerabilities in cash flows and conceptualization of modern financial agriculture’s management model. The results of the study will be useful to managers of agricultural entities in their approach to efficiency and performance within the development of financial strategies.

Introduction. In recent years, digitalization is one of the defining trends of the development in the leading countries of the world. The development of information economy is influenced by a combination of factors; however, the most powerful is an educational dominant. The higher education institutions (HEIs) carry out training activities for information economy, the development of digital skills of the personnel, as well as carrying out studies of the personnel’s digital skills, and conducting research, generating innovations and their transfer to the real sector of economy. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the impact of higher education on the dynamics of information economy on the example of Latvia with further identification of the best practices and their adaptation to the Ukrainian social and economic conditions. The research methodology is conditioned by the implementation of the in-depth comparative analysis of the development of higher education systems in Latvia and Ukraine; within the study, were used the method of constructing cubic regression models of the relationship between indicators. The hypothesis: 1) there is an objective interaction between the level of economic development of the country and the amount of public funding for higher education; 2) the information economy development is largely determined by the level of higher education development, and funding for research at HEIs. Results. The study revealed the following constraints on the development of the national higher education system: complex geopolitical, demographic, migration situation, which affects the parameters of the student body of HEIs; low competitiveness level of HEIs in the global educational services market; low level of financial autonomy of HEIs; lack of financing, low level of diversification of the financing sources for HEIs, etc. These problems negatively affect the pace of the information economy development in Ukraine. The authors proved that the Latvian experience in the implementation of the digitalization strategy could be useful for Ukraine, because of some similar economic, social, mental, historic conditions and factors of development of both countries. The calculations on the econometric models of relationship between funding and basic indicators of higher education development in Ukraine and Latvia showed: the amount of funding for higher education systems does not depend on the number of HEIs; the number of students depends on the amount of public funding (this indicates the important role of the state in the higher education development, in increasing the level of accessibility of higher education for citizens); close relationship between the amount of funding for higher education and the number of graduate students; positive trend in funding for higher education. Conclusions. The authors conclude that strengthening the impact of the educational dominant on the information economy development requires: ensuring a proactive position of HEIs (by modernizing their educational, research and innovation activities); activating the role of the government sector in protection of intellectual property, stimulating the development of innovatively active enterprises and their cooperation with universities, involving investments in the development of the HEIs’ innovative infrastructure, commercialization of innovative results of the research in the real sector of the economy.

The topic of the study is the analysis of forms of extracurricular work that contribute to the formation of foreign language communication competence among engineering students. The main tasks of the research are to identify the levels of formation of components of foreign language communicative competence among engineering students, the desire to work on self-improvement outside the classroom workload. Theoretical, empirical, statistical and mathematical methods have been used to conduct the empirical study. The participants were 64 students of the Educational-