Revista de Economie Mondiala/ Journal of Global Economics

1-17

Authors: Virginia Câmpeanu

The objective of this paper is to answer two questions: how and how much the economic and financial global crisis affected the rural development in the Member States of the European Union. Comparative analysis of statistical data shows that the severity of the crisis has influenced in different ways the rural economies of the Member States, with impact on employment rate, economic development of agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, and structure of the economy. This paper measures the impact of the global crisis on employment in rural areas as well as the impact on the development of the rural economy in the EU Member States, including Romania.

32-42

Authors: Sarmiza Pencea

Bull markets, bear markets, boom and bust, speculative bubbles are frequent phenomena with stock markets. All the more so with imature stock exchanges such as China’s, where unwary investors, lured by the prospect of quick and easy gains, trade instinctively, in accordance with the prevailing market sentiment, so that the ups and downs in securities values may be ample, unexpected and dangerous. Besides, the repeated interventions of a government which aims at tightly controlling the functioning of such markets may generate abrupt responses, which risk to get out of hand. Such an episode took place in June-July 2015, when, following 12 months of exuberant growth, Chinese stock markets, which were already in a bubble, started a sudden descent, generating panic among investors, thrills and worry amid foreign analysts. This paper radiographs this episode, looking at its causes and at the risks entailed for both the domestic and foreign markets, trying to explain the seemingly unjustified and excessive interventionist reaction of the government to the market-inflicted price corrections and to shed light on the expected consequences of the stock market fall on domestic consumption and demand for imports, on foreign demand for Chinese exports, as well as on the economies of the partner countries and the global economy as a whole.

84-97

Authors: George Cornel Dumitrescu

In the context of an increased distrust of the population in the financial system, generated by the recent crisis, ”the digital payment instruments” have emerged as a new alternative to the online transactions for a variety of communities interlinked via the Internet. Bitcoin is the first of these "instruments" that came out of the pattern of a single online community, propagating as an accepted means of payment in the transactions between virtual communities worldwide. Its platform enables the expansion of the network by taking new members: individuals, public or private organizations, etc. Analyzing economic literature, the statistical information and the available data provided by the great promoters of this payment system, our paper aims to assess the Bitcoin phenomenon, from monetary standpoint and also from the perspective of a SWOT analysis, identifying the advantages and disadvantages of the system and development prospects in the medium and long run.

115-126

Authors: Andreea Drăgoi

This article aims to analyze the European model of the welfare state both from a qualitative but also a quantitative perspective. Based on the main theoretical approaches related to the welfare state, our research aims to evaluate the consequences of the failure of social security system in Greece. Using some macro-economic indicators (the share of social security spending in the GDP, growth rate of GDP, GDP per capita and public debt) our analysis aims to highlight to what extent the welfare state can support the real disadvantaged categories of its citizens, especially in times of economic downturn.