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The shadow economy (SE) has been a serious issue with varied dimensions in all countries that significantly affect economic growth. Therefore, all countries have made an effort to tackle the SE by pursuing several measures. This study aims to investigate the impact of financial markets (stock and bond) in reducing the SE while considering the role of country risk (political, economic and financial) in N-11 countries.

The study employed first-generation methodological techniques, including a unit root test to identify stationarity in the series, a panel cointegration test and panel autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) to estimate long-run and short-run relationships. Finally, the Granger causality is applied to determine the direction of the causal relationship.

The study explored that country risk factors are crucial in reducing the size of the SE. Moreover, the significant moderating role of country risk factors in the financial market development and SE nexus suggests that by controlling the country's risk, financial market development can negatively affect the SE.

Due to the availability of data, the study used data, ranging from 1995 to 2015, because the tax burden data is available from 1995 while the maximum data for the SE is available till 2015, using Medina and Schneider's (2019) data estimates for the SE.

The previous studies have focused explicitly on the role of financial institutions' development in the SE. To the best of the author's knowledge, no previous study is attempted to investigate the role of financial markets (bonds and stock) in the size of the SE. Furthermore, previous studies have ignored the important role of country risk factors in the size of the SE. This study investigates the impact of country risk on the SE and the moderating role of country risk in the development of financial markets and the SE nexus.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between macroeconomic fundamentals, intuitional quality and shadow economy.

By utilizing data setspanning from 2004 to 2015 of 141 countries, the study has employed advanced panel technique, i.e. Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method. In order to check consistency of the results, the study also used fixed effect and random effect for robustness.

The study finds that for the full sample, institutional quality has negative effect on shadow economy while macroeconomic fundaments effect shadow economy differently. After splitting the sample into Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and non-OIC countries subsamples, it observes same influence of macroeconomic fundaments and institutional quality on shadow economy, but the effect of macroeconomic fundaments and institutional quality on shadow economy is less observed for OIC countries. The results are found consistence by using different estimation methods.

The current literature has focused on estimating the size of shadow economy and literature linking the macroeconomic fundaments, institutional quality and shadow economy is scarce. Additionally, this study provides the evidence for cross comparison between OIC economies and non-OIC economies.

The non-observed economy (NOE) is a pervasive phenomenon worldwide, especially in developing countries, but the size of the NOE and its contributions to the overall economy are usually unknown. This paper presents an estimation of the average size of the NOE for the 31 provincial regions in China between 1992 and 2013.

This study uses the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS) nighttime light data combined with 11 existing surveys on or measurements of NOE for 191 countries or regions throughout the world, to measure the size of the NOE.

The results show that the NOE share is unevenly distributed among China's provincial regions, with the smallest being 3.19% for Beijing and the largest being 69.71% for Ningxia. The national average is 43.11%, while the figures for the eastern region, middle region, northeastern region and western region are 39.3%, 47.6%, 44.7% and 43.6%, respectively. The NOE estimates are negatively correlated with the measured gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP per capita, which suggests that developed regions tend to have less NOE.

The nighttime lights are used to measure the NOE for China's provincial regions. Compared with traditional databases, one of the prominent features of nighttime lights is its objectivity, as there is little human interference; therefore, it can be used to achieve more accurate results.

The main purpose of this paper is to explore size of the shadow economy of 31 European Countries in 2014 and size of the shadow economy of 28 European Union countries over 2003-2014 (in per cent of official GDP). An additional objective is to identify tax evasion, as the problem of all the EU countries, answering the questions how better combat the tax fraud.

Estimates of the shadow economy for all 28 European Union countries and other three countries from Europe, i.e. Norway, Switzerland and Turkey – MIMIC method was applied.

The average size of the shadow economy in 28 EU countries was 22.6 per cent in 2003 and decreased to 18.6 per cent (of official GDP) in 2014. We also consider the most important driving forces of the shadow economy. The biggest ones are with 14.6 per cent unemployment and self-employment, followed by tax morale with 14.5 per cent and GDP growth with 14.3 per cent. The proportion of tax evasion (accounting for indirect taxation and self-employment activities) was on average 4.2 per cent (of official GDP) in Poland, 1.9 per cent in Germany and 2.9 per cent in the Czech Republic.

The MIMIC statistics do not address a large part of the wholly illegal economy (of typically criminal nature) and, accordingly, it is not an absolute magnitude of the whole unofficial economy. However, it does not seem that other, alternative, methods of measuring the unofficial economy are better in individual terms.

Current statistical research should lead to practical acceptance in the framework of need for developing better organizational & legal ways for multi-level governance within the European Union, leading to effective methods of counteracting – in particular intra-Union fraud. In addition, the presentation of a review of typology of the main theories and studies regarding the unofficial economy aspects relating to tax evasion constitutes a practical review of the pursued research areas.

Safeguarding the national economy as a whole, by seeking ways of reducing the scope of shadow economy.

Both regarding presentation of the latest shadow economy estimates and typology of its main studies and theories.

The purpose of this contribution is to review the theoretical and empirical literature on the economic determinants of terrorism.

Review of the relevant academic literature.

This contribution shows that there is a theoretical foundation to the popular hypothesis that poor economic conditions are conducive to terrorism. A review of the empirical evidence on the economic determinants of terrorism, however, yields an inconclusive result. Some studies find that economic conditions (directly and indirectly) matter to terrorism, whereas a plurality of studies suggest that noneconomic factors are more important.

The findings of the survey indicate that it is unlikely that economic conditions are universal determinants of terrorism. By pointing at several avenues of future research (e.g., a focus on the role of ideology in terrorism), this contribution, however, argues that the opposite also does not need to be true. The influence of economic factors on terrorism should neither be overemphasized nor completely ruled out.

The contribution offers a comprehensive overview of the economy–terrorism nexus and hints at promising areas of future research.

The authors of this chapter focus on the development of comparative education in 10 countries of Eastern and Central Europe. A historical approach is applied to the study of the main characteristics of comparative education. The first part of the chapter is devoted to the origin of comparative education studies in this region from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries till the end of the nineteenth century. The second part of the chapter examines the process of establishment of comparative education as a science and the appearance of the first lecture courses on comparative education in some countries of this region from the beginning of the twentieth century till the end of World War II. The third part presents the state of comparative education during the years of socialism – from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fourth part surveys the modern development of comparative education in Eastern and Central Europe from the beginning of democratic changes in 1989 to the present day. While presenting comparative education in each historical period, the authors first show the most prominent comparativists, then emphasize on comparative education as a university discipline, and finally synthesize the main characteristics of the development of comparative education during the period of view. The chapter concludes with some generalizations on the four periods.

This opening chapter sets a frame for the chapters of this volume, dealing with how the dynamic dialectic interplay between forceful global societal forces and context shape humanity’s education response in various parts of the world. “Context” as a perennial threshold concept in Comparative and International Education is explicated. It will then be explained how, during its long historical evolution, scholars in the field each time had to contend new contexts, or reconceived the notion of “context” in a new way. Subsequently the problems of an overly fixation on the historical and the present, to the detriment of the future, and inertia are extant in the field, will be explained. The unprecedented, seismic changes currently impacting on the societal context worldwide, will then be enumerated. These changes can be subsumed under the collective name of globalization. The concept globalization is then clarified, and the take of the scholarly community on the impact of globalization on education is then mapped and interrogated. The authors’ stance on this is stated, namely that a dynamic interplay between global focus and contextual realities shape education in various parts of the world. It is in this theoretical frame that the remainder of the chapters of the volume is presented, combing out the main features of education development in each part of the world, as a dialectic between global forces and contextual imperatives.

Accelerators provide a way for entrepreneurs to capitalize on new knowledge and technology regarding sport. The advantage of accelerators is that they can utilize the wisdom of crowds in order to facilitate a quick introduction into the marketplace of new ideas. This is crucial in the competitive sport industry, which relies on utilizing knowledge intensive products and services for competitive reasons. Knowledge in a sport context can be hard to describe as it can refer to processes that enable better production processes. For this reason, it is useful to understand how knowledge is a source of power in the sport market and how it can be used strategically. This chapter focuses on issues such as knowledge management and knowledge hoarding as a way to gain a competitive advantage in the sport industry, thereby linking the research on accelerators to a knowledge perspective in the sport context.