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Ivan Angelov
Impact of Industry 4.0 on the Foreign Direct Investment Attraction Factors
Summary:
The tendency towards increasing digitalization, automation and robotics in numeral branches of the economy reflects on different aspects of the international business affairs. The paper examines the impact of the upcoming fourth industrial revolution on the foreign direct investment (FDI) attraction and realization processes. It studies the specific features of Industry 4.0, stressing their importance for the stakeholders in FDI.
The main problem examined in the article is the shifting of the key FDI attraction factors that is expected due to the industrial revolution. The analysis of the FDI attraction factors amendment finds that we can expect changes in the behaviour and priorities of FDI stakeholders, but not a decrease in the international capital flows.
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Georgi Georgiev Dimitrov
Economic Efficiency Due to Improvements in the Road Infrastructure of the Transport Corridors on the Territories of the Republic of Bulgaria
Summary:
In the present study economic efficiency for users of road infrastructure in its building in directions of the land trans European transport corridors in the territory of the country. For the purpose shall be calculated the potential savings in operating costs, by using the method of the scenarios. In the case of the first variant road infrastructure is in this condition, and in the second option, it is accepted that are already built priority projects for the construction of highways and speed roads.
The main purpose of the study is to determine from a consumer point of view to which transport corridors it is economic priority to focus resources and efforts to build the road their infrastructure.
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Petya Emilova, Kremena Marinova
Innovative Solutions and Technologies in Tourism as an Opportunity for Digitalization of the Hotel Business
Summary:
Modern information and communication technologies are a factor for achieving effective management in the tourism sector and in particular hotels, and for this purpose they need to implement appropriate to their scale and requirements modern hotel information systems.
The purpose of this article is to study the hotel information systems offered on the software market and in particular those that successfully combine leading innovative trends such as application in the business of web technologies, cloud solutions and others. In this regard, the following tasks have been solved: the possibilities of Web 2.0 technologies, cloud services and Internet of Things (IoT) technology as important technological factors for the development of the tourism and hotel industry have been analyzed; the peculiarities and functional possibilities of the hotel information systems are presented; criteria for selection of hotel information system are outlined; în this basis, a comparative analysis of the web-based hotel information systems offered on the software market has been made; factors and recommendations for selection and implementation are defined.
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Nataliya Marinova
Information Society in European Union and Bulgaria – Situation and Trends in Information and Communication Technologies Usage
Summary:
The European Union has long recognized the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as key factor to greater competitiveness and integration of business organizations of the continent into the global economy. Currently, the transition to the Information Society has no alternative. Matter of national choice of each Member State, including Bulgaria, is not whether to build such, but manner and forms of its realization. Development of Information Society is a cross-border and transnational process in which individual countries implement their national policies.
The theme of this paper is to investigate legislation, condition and trends in European Information Society. The aim of the study is a comparative analysis of indicators characterizing the Information Society in Europe as a whole and Bulgaria in particular. An empirical data from the websites of Eurostat, National Statistical Institute and the survey with the participation of the author are used for achieving the objective.
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Iskren Tairov
Mobile Commerce and its Problems
Summary:
Mobile technologies bring sufficient benefits to business, which can be realized only if companies succeed to use them effectively. The present paper describes mobile technologies and their evolution as a premise for mobile commerce development in detail.
Object of study of this paper is mobile commerce in developed countries and in Bulgaria. The paper is focused on mobile commerce problems. The purpose of the paper is to recommend directions in solving mobile commerce issues on security.
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Rosemary Papworth
A Multi-Disciplinary, Social Constructivist Approach to Promoting Student Engagement, Retention and Achievement in Higher Education
Summary:
This article details a social constructivist-based methodology to learning English as a foreign language via a multi-disciplinary approach. The approach used bases learning in a novel, real-world situation so that learners can benefit from the experience of learning and gaining tacit knowledge within a scenario that is designed to enhance motivation. The two groups of students under study were given a year-long project to complete where they had to use not only their language skills, but skills they had developed in other modules from their programme of education such as project planning, project management, planning and holding meetings, producing project reports and working within a collaborative framework. The teaching and research methods in this study aim to improve student engagement with subject materials via added-value and added interest through the use of a practical project, which, in turn, is hoped to improve class retention and student achievement.
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Nedim Dikmen
Nominal GDP And Macroeconomic Policy Choice: St. Louis Model Estimates
Summary:
In this study, we investigate the question of whether monetarist or Keynesian policies were more effective on GDP growth in Turkey. To this aim, we employ the St. Louis model and examine the statistical significance of the estimated parameters. The effects of changes in money supply or government expenditures on GDP growth are not only limited to the current period but might continue over time as well. Hence, we also include the lagged values of the explanatory variables in the model. The estimation period covers the 1981 – 2008 period. The model is estimated by OLS and captures the accumulated effects of the changes in the narrow and wide definitons of money supply (M1 and M2) and government expenditures on the growth of nominal GDP growth. These estimates correspond to the total or distributed lag multipliers for monetary and fiscal policies. The former is not found to be statistically significant whereas the latter is statistically significant. These findings indicate that Keynesian policies based on expansionary fiscal policy via increased government expenditures had more influence on GDP growth in Turkey than the monetarist approach. These results also reflect the various governments’ populist approaches for political purposes. Overall, we find that the St. Louis equation approach is a valid and applicable model in the Turkish case.
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Admira Boshnyaku
Characteristics of the Business Environment in the Context of Industry 4.0
Summary:
Today’s business organisations operate in an extremely complex and rapidly changing business environment. Among the reasons for this dynamics are rapid technological progress, business globalization processes, changes in consumer requirements, etc. The fourth industrial revolution and the massive application of the technologies associated with it in all aspects of our lives, in combination with the COVID-19 pandemic, have significantly strengthened all these processes, changing important factors of the surrounding business environment and thus posing new requirements and challenges for companies. In this regard, this article examines the main groups of macro factors of the business organizations' environment, analyzes some changes in them and some new requirements caused by Industry 4.0, that business organizations should take into account in the process of strategic business planning.
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Sosthene Codjia, Walter E. Block
Economic Development Policies in West Africa: Making the Case for Free Enterprise
Summary:
Economic development in Africa and everywhere else for that matter, is furthered by capital accumulation. And this is fostered by economic freedom and private property rights which encourages the saving and investment which are the sine qua non of economic growth. The present paper attempts to make this case with regard to the African continent.
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Valentin Panayotov
Problem Areas in the Activities of Management Consultants
Summary:
The article reveals the main problem areas in the activity of management consultants. For successful implementation of consultancy projects, it is important to select consultants with the necessary competencies and qualifications. Emphasis is placed on the appropriate personal characteristics that have a great importance on cooperative working with the client. There are those whose importance is difficult to assess, but which can have a very deep impact on the outcome of counseling. These include the consultant's belief system, source of motivation, personal ethics, objectivity, honesty, and loyalty. It is very important that these qualities appear as early as possible in the communication between the consultant and the client
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Andrey Zahariev
Prospective Reflections on Human Capital
Summary:
Guided by the understanding of the pulsing nature of economic thought, in this article we set ourselves the task of developing prospective ideas and grasping of the past, the present and the future of the theory of the investment in human capital as responsibility of the key economic agents: the government, the companies and the households. The structure of this study consistently reviews the historical development of the human capital theory. It gives the corporate point of view within the range of views of financial management of human resources. It gives prospective argumentation of possible evolution lines of human capital knowledge. The developed verbal-graphic model of investments in the formation of human capital adduces arguments in support of consolidation of the five types of activities for formation of human capital with the three sources of resources, aimed at human capital in its individual and national (global) dimension. In the course of research the conclusion is derived that there is no need to counterpoise capitalism and talantism but on the contrary, through capitalism (the world of capital) the era of talantism (the world of intellect, faculties, family values and talent) should be promoted.
