SPOUDAI - Journal of Economics and Business

3-29

Authors: Wei-Bin Zhang

The purpose of this paper is to examine dynamic interdependence between wealth accumulation, capital accumulation, economic structure, domestic and global division of labor, international trade and environmental change with transboundary pollution. It analyzes not only inequalities in income, wealth and economic structures between (any number of) countries, but also differences in environmental changes between countries. The model is built on the basis of the Solow model, the Uzawa two-sector growth model, the Oniki-Uzawa trade model, and the neoclassical growth models in environmental economics. The general equilibrium dynamic model includes any number of national economies and each national economy has two sectors. After building the model, we show that the dynamics of the world economy with countries is described by differential equations. We simulate the motion of the global economy with three national economies. We also examine the effects of changes in the propensity to environmental taxes, the efficiency of environmental protection, and the population upon dynamic paths of the system. Our analysis provides some insights into the complexity of global economic growth with environment. For instance, the well-known study by Grossman and Krueger (1995) identifies no evidence that “environmental quality deteriorates steadily with economic growth.” Our simulation indicates that this conclusion holds for some countries, but is invalid for other countries. JEL Classification: F11; O41; Q56. Keywords: trade; economic growth; transboundary pollution; environmental change; environmental policies.

49-72

Authors: Christos Triantopoulos

The global financial crisis of 2007/2008 was the painful peak of a decade of “financial euphoria” and inadequate financial re-regulation in the advanced economies. However, during that period of “financial euphoria”, the structure of the developed financial systems in the EU varied significantly, considering the importance of the banking market or that of the capital market in the system as a whole. Thus, an area for political economy research emerges, considering the institutions and the structural elements of an economy that could have contributed to this kind of differentiation. In this paper, the analysis is focused on the financial system’s funding from individuals and households as one of the three basic fields of the financial intermediation process. Particularly, we discuss and examine the relationshipbetween “privatization of risk” and income inequality -as characteristics of the households’ investment orientation- with the development of structurally varied financial systems in the EU. The descriptive and statistical results suggest that households’ investment orientation is related with the differentiation in the characteristics of the EU financial systems. However, this nexus can partially interpret -in terms of political economy- the varied financial systems in the EU, as the analysis must take into account the remaining fields of the financial intermediation process: the funding from international and interbank markets and the financial system’s funding to the economy. JEL Classifications:P51, P16, P34, G21. Keywords:Varieties of capitalism; Financial structures; Household investments; Privatization of risk; Income inequality.

94 - 115

Authors: Irene Fafaliou, Marinos Stefanitsis, Aelita Skaržauskienė

Although small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) involvement in the innovation process is a long standing issue and recently has resurged in the relevant literature, building and sustaining innovation is a hard and non linear work. The purpose of the paper is to explore the propensity of SMEs to innovate drawing evidence from three different countries and a wide variety of sectors and firms’ ages and sizes. In particular, this paper focuses on differences between various characteristics of the surveyed SMEs and attempts to establish links with firms’ tendency to innovate. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey addressed to a sample of 336 firms located in Greece, Croatia, and Lithuania. Findings suggest a somewhat problematic relationship between Greek and Croatian firms and their involvement to innovation. Lithuanian firms, however, seem to be more committed to innovation since they employ a more dynamic approach to innovation process and its implementation. JEL Classification: O31; L20; O57. Keywords: innovation; small and medium-sized enterprises; Greece; Croatia; Lithuania