Keywords: unit-linked products; investment guarantees; Black–Scholes–Merton Model; theory of options; equilibrium prices
One of the consequences of the financial markets’ development, and implicitly of insurance markets, has been the emergence of unit-linked life insurance products in the last two decades. Unit-linked contracts are life insurance policies with investment components. Due to the financial instability caused by the Global Crisis and the amplification of market competitiveness, insurers from international markets have started to incorporate guarantees in unit-linked products. So a unit-linked life insurance policy with an asset value guarantee is an insurance policy whose benefit payable on death or at maturity consists of the greater of some guaranteed amount and the value of the units from the investment funds. One of the most challenging issues concerns the pricing of minimum death benefit and maturity benefit guarantees and the establishment of proper reserves for these guarantees. Although the Romanian legislation authorizes the Romanian insurers to offer unitlinked contracts without investment guarantees, this research provides a proposal of a theoretical and empirical basis for pricing and assessing unit-linked insurance contracts with incorporated investment guarantees. Therefore the model provides a theoretical framework for valuing these investment guarantees. Our findings reveal that the investment policy is optimal in that it provides the Romanian insurance company with a hedging strategy against the investment risk connected with these benefit guarantees.
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Keywords: economic crisis; fiscal policy; national and sub-national fiscal rules; fiscal rules index
The aim of the paper is to analyse the evolution of national fiscal rules in the European Union in the period 2000–2014, with particular emphasis put on changes in the quality of these rules in time. To achieve such a defined goal, indices of fiscal rules were constructed for 28 countries of the European Union for the years 2000–2014. These indices measure the quality of fiscal rules using various criteria (and the features within each criterion), which characterize the rules in use in different countries. Various levels of those indices reflect the diverse quality of fiscal rules used in the EU countries in the period of investigation. The hypothesis was formulated that in the analysed period in the European Union countries the indices of fiscal rules were increasing systematically, which means that those countries were improving quality of fiscal rules in use, especially after the beginning of economic crisis. The investigation gave evidence that the hypothesis could be proved.
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Keywords: innovations; patents; research and development; regional development
The purpose of this paper is to try to evaluate the level and degree of spatial concentration of innovative activities in the European Union regions over the period 2000–2011. In accordance with conducted studies on definitions, as well as, a common practice present in the economic literature, authors decided to use the patent data as a measure of innovative activities. The conducted research indicate that the level and concentration of innovations in the EU regions was changing significantly. Moreover, the spatial autocorrelation analysis based on I Moran’s statistic showed that the innovative activities were concentrated not only in particular regions (which was proved by high values of Gini index) but also in groups of regions.
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Keywords: segregation; labour market; women; sex
The article undertakes the issue of the occupational segregation on the Polish labour market in the years 1994–2014. At the beginning, the analysis focuses on the main theoretical aspects of discussed phenomenon, including theories of economic discrimination against women. Secondly, the article shows the statistical and economic analysis of both dimensions of the occupational segregation: the vertical and the horizontal one, in the context of the Polish labour market in research period. Next, it shows the occupational segregation in the light of public opinion polls. In conclusion, the main aims of the paper and research hypotheses are verified within conducted analysis.
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Keywords: invention; innovation; innovation gap; knowledge – based economy; R+D activity
The purpose of this paper is to explain the essence of the Europe 2020 Strategy, with particular emphasis on development projects in the field of innovation; to assess the level of innovation in the EU economies in comparison to the U.S., Japan and South Korea, and to describe the conditions for the development of the EU economic area in light of the Strategy program objectives. The paper consists of three parts. The first part outlines the essence and objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy. The second part contains an analysis of the level of innovativeness of the EU economies compared with U.S., Japan and South Korea. The third part focuses on the conditions and prospects for the development of innovative economies in the European Union.
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Keywords: systemic transformation outcomes; Eastern Europe; economic growth; social capital; social cohesion; national identity
GDP growth over time is a widely used measure of the transformation outcome, which is easily accessible and cross-country comparable. GDP has been criticized as an indicator of social welfare, but little attempt was made to develop the alternative measure of the transformation outcomes. The article seeks to answer the question whether GDP growth over time is useful to assess the transformation outcomes. Transformation in Eastern Europe has its own characteristics, since it involves several paralel transformation processes among which there is formation of political nation. Given the findings of various authors regarding the course of Eastern European systemic transformation, one can hypothesize that the unfinished process of shaping national identity hinders transformation. This hypothesis had been confirmed with regard to the processes of democratization, but it is difficult to examine the possible relationship between the (civic) national identity and economic growth because of lack of appropriate indicators of identity. The article presents an attempt to test the hypothesis on the basis of national identity measure constructed on the base of the European Values Survey, although due to the scope of EVS, this indicator is imperfect. The results are promising, however not conclusive due to the quality of national identity index. It can be a task for a future research project to find a relevant measure that can quantify the stage of national identity formation.
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Keywords: employed persons; employment rates; ownership structure of employment; sectoral structure of employment
The goal of the paper is to analyse and assess sectoral employment structure in Poland as compared with other EU countries in the years 2005–2014. To this purpose a comparative analysis is undertaken in such fields as: employment rates, ownership structure of employment and sectoral structure of employment. The research proves there is an increasing tendency of employment rates in Poland leading to a better position of Poland in the ranking of the EU countries. It is worth noticing a positive tendency to increase a private sector in total employment. However sectoral employment structure is outdated in Poland as compared with other EU countries. This is because the Polish shares of agriculture are relatively high and the shares of services are relatively low in total employment.
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Keywords: communication; workers participation; corporate governance; transfer of information
The information provided to employees is an essential element of employee participation, and at the same time a prerequisite for their involvement in solving problems of the company. Such information may be provided to employees in two ways: directly or through employee representations. The study is focused mainly on the latter method. Most attention was paid to providing information to works councils, using the results of a research project still under way. The scope of the information passed to employee representatives in supervisory boards was also analyzed, as well as information provided to employees in enterprises in the Mazowieckie province.
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Keywords: pension funds; shareholder engagement; corporate governance; institutional investors
The aim of this article was to portray how open-end pension funds (OFEs) perform oversight functions in their portfolio companies, to analyze the determinants pertaining to this activity and to assess the quality of their oversight. This analysis covers the activity exhibited by pension funds at the shareholder meetings of portfolio companies from 2009 to 2012 and following statutory amendments in 2014 and 2015. This analysis of the legal determinants and of the incentives to be engaged in oversight indicates that investment limits should not form an obstacle to pension funds’ activity; however, one should anticipate more extensive engagement in companies that exert the greatest impact on the pension funds’ relative performance. The findings demonstrate that in both periods under analysis the largest pension funds have discharged their fiduciary duties. Despite significant modification to the legal environment affecting the investment activity and economic position of pension fund companies, pension funds have been found to be more active in the period following the changes to the law. The level of activity and the extent of intervention in the various portfolio companies varied in these two periods. This article depicts the author’s proprietary concept for an activist closed end investment fund as a shared platform for OFEs to take activist measures and share the costs incurred in this process.
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Keywords: Name-list; Bulgarian khans; Protobulgaria; Pogodin and Moscow transcript; Uvarov transcript
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Keywords: The Gospels (Tetraevangelia); Tsar Ivan Alexander; British Library
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Keywords: Manuscripts, 10th c.; Codex Suprasliensis; The German Codex from 1358–1359; Medieval Bulgarian literature
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Keywords: Study of the Greek and Latin Commentaries on Genesis; Lexical analysis
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Lexical analysis of Berliner Miscellany
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Keywords: Development of the Bulgarian language; verbs types
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Keywords: Palaeographic Studies
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