Aliya Myrzabekovna Atenova

Type of the article: Research Article

Digital skills anchor human-capital policy in the European knowledge economy, yet which dimension of digitalization moves lifelong learning remains unsettled, as connectivity, specialist, and training targets are pursued in parallel. The paper aims to quantify the association between the workforce’s digital-skills composition and adult participation in learning across 31 European economies, using an unbalanced annual 2015–2023 panel supplemented by DigComp 2.0 waves for 2021–2025, and to draw implications for human-capital policy. Both are estimated with two-way fixed-effects models, lagged regressors, country-clustered standard errors, and an audit of survey redesigns. The lagged employment share of ICT specialists is positively associated with adult learning: a one-percentage-point increase corresponds to a 1.38-point gain (β = 1.379, p = 0.034; wild-cluster bootstrap p = 0.077). Diffusion-type measures – daily internet use and online health-information seeking – show no such link (β = 0.021 and 0.025), although the specialist coefficient is not statistically distinguishable from theirs. The coefficient stays positive across estimators and samples (0.44–1.76) and significant in the pre-break 2015–2020 window (β = 1.536, p = 0.024); a formal test does not reject constancy across the 2021 EU-LFS redesign. Direct skills measures point the same way but stay insignificant (β = 0.042–0.121); unemployment is counter-cyclical (β = 0.583–0.694). The evidence is consistent with rebalancing policy from connectivity targets towards workforce skills composition – a margin unmeasured in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Armenia – with specialist pipelines as the instrument most directly supported and enterprise ICT training as a possible, not yet established, channel.

Acknowledgment
Vladyslav Smiianov contributed to this article within the framework of the research project “Modelling the impact of economic digitalization on public health in Ukraine in the context of preserving human capital”, funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (State Registration No. 0126U001085).

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Between 2005 and 2024, the digital divide separating former Soviet economies outside the EU from EU member states shrank from 44.8 to 2.4 points of a composite 0–100 index, and whether banking systems converted this catch-up into better performance is an open question. The paper evaluates the intermediation efficiency and productivity of banking in 24 transition economies during 2010–2024 and quantifies their relationship with digital infrastructure, paying special attention to Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Efficiency is measured with input-oriented window DEA on deposit funding, operating costs, lending, and profitability; productivity with Malmquist indices; and digital infrastructure with a principal-component index of internet, mobile, and broadband penetration. The estimation relies on two-way fixed effects with Driscoll-Kraay and bootstrap inference on 356 country-year observations. Productivity is flat overall with a Malmquist mean of 0.995, yet technological change moves from below unity through 2015 to above unity in 2016–2023, a regime shift robust to the output set and the translation constant. Within countries, the index is unrelated to efficiency levels, productivity growth, cost efficiency, and stability outcomes; the baseline cost-to-income and credit-risk associations dissolve under country-specific trends and differencing. Cumulative productivity reaches 1.162 in Kazakhstan and 1.106 in Armenia by 2024, while Ukraine climbs back to 0.856. Frontier renewal after 2016, rather than a measurable dividend from connectivity, is the substantive finding, and expectations of direct efficiency or stability gains from digital infrastructure should remain modest, particularly in postwar Ukraine.