Tetiana Shabelnyk

Global financial transformations provoke shifts in financial systems that can threaten countries’ economic security. Further integration of the CEE states to the global economy will be accompanied by the increasing dependence of their financial markets and economic security on global financial challenges. The study aims to identify the relationship between global and regional financial trends that shape CEE countries’ economic security and reveal the shifts in the CEE region’s economic security under the influence of global financial transformation. The global financial transformations are the object of the study. Comparative analysis of the dynamics of financial transformations in the world and the CEE countries is made using structural analysis and methods of economic and mathematical modeling of trends. Given the heterogeneity of the CEE states’ financial development, global financial transformations have different manifestations in these countries. The relationship between global and regional indicators of financial transformation proved to be ambiguous. The regional dynamics of stock market capitalization, debt securities, and external debt fit corresponding world indicators’ dynamics. The indicators of global and regional official reserves and bank assets are moving in different directions. The region’s economic security challenges are great volatility of stock market capitalization, growth of external debt burden, and uneven distribution of official reserves. The obtained results should be considered when identifying financial threats affecting the CEE countries’ security and developing relevant policies for shaping the region’s efficient financial system.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
The study tests whether e-government development is associated with the level of central-government investment and the size of the investment cut that accompanies fiscal consolidation. Two-way fixed-effects panel regressions are estimated for 134 economies across the twelve waves of the United Nations E-Government Survey between 2003 and 2024 (1,319 country-wave observations), with World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) fiscal data. When the primary balance improves by at least one percentage point of GDP in a survey year, countries at the 25th percentile of the E-Government Development Index cut central-government investment by 0.94 percentage points of GDP, and those at the 75th by 0.20 (interaction β = 2.15 per index unit, p = 0.009). Above the upper quartile, the cut is indistinguishable from zero. Outside consolidation episodes, e-government development has no detectable association with investment levels, and the estimate rules out the negative cross-country gradient. The same pattern holds for the capital share of central-government spending and across alternative episode definitions, winsorized outcomes, leave-one-country-out, permutation, and placebo tests and two independent investment series; it is not separable from government effectiveness and weakens with country-specific trends and upper-tail trimming. Episodes achieved through revenue and current spending leave investment untouched at every level of the index; the attenuation reflects the composition of fiscal adjustment. The evidence casts e-government as a marker of the administrative capacity that keeps consolidation off the capital budget; if the association is causal, digital budget, procurement, and project-pipeline systems belong in place before adjustment begins.

Acknowledgment
The contribution of Liudmyla Zakharkina was prepared within the framework of the research project “GovTech for Ukraine: A Digital, Secure, Transparent, and Equitable State in Times of War and Post-War Reconstruction” (registration number 0126U000544), funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. The other authors received no external funding for this study.