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Maya Tsoklinova
Government Redistributive Policies in EU Member States: Comparative Characteristics
Summary:
Fiscal discipline regarding tax revenues and expenditure, stabilization of incomes, promotion of consumption and stimulation of economic activity during the business cycle are essential for achieving macroeconomic stability. Despite the built-in automatic stabilizers and the limit that is set in the EU in terms of government expenditure, they are not a guarantee of achieving similarity in the economic development of individual EU member states and their behaviour, especially during economic crises, as well as in terms of quantity of supply of public goods relevant to public welfare. In addition, each EU member state constructs its economic policy in a way that meets the commonly accepted objectives in the EU. In this sense, government expenditures of the sub-sector “Central Government” are a necessary mechanism for ensuring the sustainability and stability of national economies and are a criterion for achieving the medium and long-term goals in government programs. The main goal of the article is to systematize the EU member states into homogeneous groups (Êëúñòúðs) based on the relative shares of expenditure by functions of the COFOG in GDP, and on this basis to make a comparative analysis of the financing of public goods important to society, which reflects differences in state redistributive policies at EU level. The research hypothesis defended in the present study states that, regardless of the existence of common fiscal rules and policies in the EU, there is a significant difference in the financing of public goods in individual EU member states, which is a prerequisite for different government redistributive policies at the EU level , as well as for the differentiated implementation of the goals set in the “Europe 2020” strategy, related to the generation of intelligent, sustainable and inclusive growth. Non-hierarchical Cluster analysis and more specifically K-means Cluster was used to achieve the research objective.
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Maya Tsoklinova
Degree of Differences in the Structure of Government Expenditure for the Provision of Collective Services Between EU-26 and Bulgaria
Summary:
The main goal of this article is to examine the differences in the structure of the expenditure of the “Central Gorvernment” sub-sector by functions of the classification of the functions of state government (COFOG) between the EU-26 and Bulgaria in the period 2007 - 2021 and, on this basis, to analyze the conducted public policies in the field of providing collective services for the benefit of society, aimed at increasing public welfare. To realize the set goal, an integral coefficient of structural differences is used. The obtained results indicate that during the analyzed period there are significant differences in the structure of certain expenditure by functions of the COFOG between the EU-26 and Bulgaria, which in turn is the reason for differentiation in the public policies implemented between the EU and Bulgaria.
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Milka Bakyrdzhieva
Humor - a Means of Efficient Business Communication. Age, Gender and Cultural Differences
Summary:
Humour is considered a means for efficient business communication and a factor for successful business. It relieves the tension and stress, „breaks the ice”, leads to creative decisions, conveys inconvenient truths as skillful jokes, wins sympathy and trust when the jokes are directod to the speaker, „aikido”, etc. Everybody can learn how to joke. This requires some knowledge on the essence of humour, the main types of humour, the importance of humour, and especially on the existing age, gender, and cultural differences. With such knowledge and appropriate trainnig everybody shall know when, where, and how to use his sense of humour.
