Artem Artyukhov

This paper explores how the war in Ukraine changed the interest in higher education of Ukrainians who stayed on the territory of Ukraine and emigrated to other countries. The methodology is based on Google Trends Analysis and peak approach with Google Trends Scale of Internet user inquiries about higher education from June 20, 2021 to June 20, 2023 with a middle point on February 24, 2022. Dynamics of changes in the queries of Internet users by keywords regarding studied higher education are: 1) exclusively from the territory of Ukraine; 2) from the territory of Poland, Slovakia, Germany, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Austria, i.e., top-10 countries by number of registered Ukrainian refugees according to the UN Refugee Agency. The key results are: 1) increased interest of Internet users in higher education after beginning of the full-scale war: Poland – 22.9%, Romania – 28.9%, Ukraine – 31.2%, Hungary – 32.4%, Slovakia – 35.8%, Moldova – 49.0% of average number of «university» inquiries; 2) increased requests for professional education (42.2%), distance education (25.6%), distance learning (34.1%) after February 24, 2022; 3) correlation between negative trends of interest per 32% from July 2021 (100 GT Scale) to July 2022 (68 GT Scale) in Ukraine and positive trends of this indicator in European counties in August 2022 (80-100 GT Scale). Chi-square test showed statistical significance of changes in interest in higher education (p-value = 0). Key findings demonstrate the following trends after February 24, 2022: distance learning development, increased Internet users’ orientation towards professional education for high-paying jobs, popularity of flexible schedules.

Acknowledgments
The educational outcomes in this publication were created with the support of the EU Erasmus+ program within the framework of projects ERASMUS-JMO-2021-HEI-TCH-RSCH-101048055 – «AICE – With Academic integrity to EU values: step by step to common Europe» and ERASMUS-JMO-2022-HEI-TCH-RSCH-101085198 «OSEE – Open Science and Education in Europe: success stories for Ukrainian academia».

Tax competitiveness of the country characterizes the ability of the tax system to obtain permanent competitive advantages in attracting external and mobilizing internal financial resources due to the establishment of the optimal level of tax burden and differentiation of fiscal instruments. The complexity of this indicator determines the presence of a number of drivers of its formation. Shadow tax evasion is one of them. The purpose of the study is to assess the impact of the shadow tax evasion of taxpayers on the level of competitiveness of the tax system on the example of 11 European countries from 2011 to 2021. The methodological tools are regression analysis methods, Shapiro-Wilk tests, and Spearman’s rank correlation. It was determined that informal employment, informal production, and unregistered or informal entrepreneurship are the most common methods of tax evasion. Based on the results of the calculations, regression equations of the influence of shadow tax evasion on the level of competitiveness of the country’s tax system were constructed. It has been proven that shadow tax evasion exerts the greatest influence on the level of tax competitiveness of Slovenia (0.32), Romania (0.34), and Croatia (0.26). The least sensitive to shadow tax evasion is the competitiveness of the Czech Republic’s tax system (0.096). For most analyzed countries, this influence is carried out with a time lag of 2 years. Only in Croatia, this influence is the most substantial with a one-year lag.

Acknowledgment
The study is funded by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under the project No. 09I03-03-V01-00042.
The authors are grateful to the participants of projects “National security of Ukraine through the prevention of financial fraud and money laundering: war and post-war challenges” (2023–2025, state registration number: 0123U101945) and “De-shadowing and regulatory efficiency of environmental taxation: optimization modelling to ensure national security and rational use of nature” (2022–2024, registration number 0122U000777) for numerous discussions and comments.

In the conditions of permanent capital outflow and business registration by residents in other jurisdictions, the issue of developing a country’s marketing strategies for doing business and identifying the most effective mechanisms for increasing international tax attractiveness is urgent. The prerequisite of these processes should be the determination of the level of international tax competitiveness followed by identifying the most significant factors of its growth. The purpose of the study is to assess the level of international tax competitiveness as an element of marketing strategies of Ukraine and some EU countries during 2011–2021. The methodological tools are correlation-regression analysis, the Fisher method, and the multiplicative convolution method. The paper assessed the level of international tax competitiveness as a comprehensive indicator that considers procedural, institutional, moral-ethical, and economic components. The calculations showed that the most competitive are the tax systems of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, Finland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. Based on hierarchical and non-hierarchical (k-means method) clustering, 3 clusters of regions were identified. For each of them, based on an analysis of the features of the tax system construction and the comparison of marginal and average values, the criteria for the identification of competing countries and those with common development trends were formed. This makes it possible to determine the most effective mechanisms for the implementation of marketing strategies reforming tax policy from the point of view of increasing its international tax attractiveness.

Acknowledgment
The study is funded by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under the project No. 09I03-03-V01-00042.
The authors are grateful to the participants of projects “National security of Ukraine through the prevention of financial fraud and money laundering: war and post-war challenges” (2023–2025, state registration number: 0123U101945) and “De-shadowing and regulatory efficiency of environmental taxation: optimization modelling to ensure national security and rational use of nature” (2022–2024, registration number 0122U000777) for numerous discussions and comments.

The formation of the country’s tax competitiveness and countering the shadowing of the economy depend on several factors. One of them is an effective public administration. It defines state policy vectors, institutions’ critical tasks, and business and society development priorities. The aim of the paper is to analyze the impact of good governance on the country’s tax competitiveness and the level of the shadow economy of 11 EU countries and Ukraine in 2011–2021. The study employs statistical analysis of data series. It constructs a correlation field of points of relationship between indicators (to determine the general trends of changes in the level of the shadow economy, tax competitiveness, and the Good Governance Index). Linear mathematical model and Fishburn formula are used to construct an integral indicator of the level of efficiency of public management (Good Governance Index). Structural modeling methods formalize the influence of government management on the level of the shadow economy and tax competitiveness. It was found that the Government Efficiency Index and the Corruption Control Index exert the most significant correlation with the level of tax competitiveness and the shadow economy. Its increase of 1% leads to a rise in the level of tax competitiveness of Slovakia by 7.015%, Croatia by 6.889%, the Czech Republic by 6.606%, and Romania by 5.773%. At the same time, the smallest correlation with the level of tax competitiveness performs an Index of Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism.

Acknowledgment
The study is funded by the project VEGA – 1/0392/23 “Changes in the approach to the creation of companies’ distribution management concepts influenced by the effects of social and economic crises caused by the global pandemic and increased security risks.”
The authors are grateful to the participants of projects 0123U101945 and 0122U000777 for numerous discussions and comments.

This study focuses on the relationship between the Human Development Index (HDI) and public social expenditures, analyzing socio-economic models using the examples of selected European countries and Ukraine. The study used the values of the HDI, GDP, and indicators of public expenditures for social purposes, namely, healthcare, education, leisure, culture and religion, and social protection for the period from 2010 to 2021. The analysis targeted 13 European countries using data sets from Eurostat, the Office for National Statistics of the United Kingdom, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, and the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine. The input time series were checked for lagged values using the STATISTICA software.
Empirical evidence suggests a relationship between HDI and public social spending. An increase in the share of public social expenditures in GDP leads to an increase in HDI and vice versa. European countries with a social-democratic model of development have the highest level of centralization of public expenditure in GDP (34.72%) and the highest HDI (0.930), while countries belonging to the Southern European model have the lowest share of socially oriented public expenditure (30.41%) and the lowest HDI (0.873). In addition, there is a time lag between the investment of public funds in healthcare, education, leisure, culture and religion, and social protection and their impact on HDI changes. Thus, ensuring a high level of HDI is achieved, among other things, through state financial support for the relevant components of the social sphere and social protection.

Acknowledgment
The study is funded by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under project No. 09I03-03-V01-00130.

The structure of the higher education market in 2012–2021 in 38 European countries was analyzed using concentration levels and Herfindahl-Hirschman indices based on the number of higher education institutions and their share in the QS World University Rankings, and the number of students. This market in 2021 has a low concentration: the 3 countries with the largest number of higher education institutions (Germany, Ukraine, France) covered about 36% of the market in total; the 3 countries with the largest number of universities in the QS (United Kingdom, Germany, Italy) – 5%; the 3 countries with the largest number of students (Germany, France, United Kingdom) – 37%; and the 3 countries with the largest number of foreign students (United Kingdom, Germany, France) – 5%. Using parametric and non-parametric comparison tests, it was found that although the number of higher education institutions and students does not generally depend on the population’s income level, the number of universities ranked in the QS and foreign students does. The correlation analysis revealed that GDP and GNI, population, and separately the employment and unemployment rates (for ranked universities and foreign students) are important factors that determine the uneven structure of the higher education market. The identified factors formed the basis for clustering countries using Ward’s hierarchical method, which revealed the clear existence of 3 clusters: the smallest of them accumulates the 4 largest European economies with the most ranked universities; the largest (24 countries) is quite diverse, which indicates relatively equal opportunities in the market and its unification.

Acknowledgment
Tetiana Vasylieva and Artem Artyukhov thank project 0122U000772, and Nadiia Artyukhova thanks project 0124U000545 for carrying out their part of this research.

Considering Ukraine’s corruption scandals at all levels of public governance, combating corruption and enhancing transparency have become a pivotal factor in maintaining the trust of Ukrainian citizens and foreign partners in central and local authorities. It is also an essential prerequisite for Ukraine’s prospective membership in the EU and the allocation of financial assistance from external donors. The study aims to examine how transparency in local governance influences the level of corruption in regional cities of Ukraine. The paper examines how transparency in local authorities relates to different types of corruption, including bribery within municipal services, healthcare, and other public sectors. Utilizing panel data from 24 Ukrainian cities collected between 2017 and 2020 (all-Ukrainian sociological municipal survey and project ‘Transparent, Financially Sound and Competitive Local Governments in Ukraine’), the study employs both random and fixed-effects panel regression analyses to assess the impact of various governance indicators on corruption levels across different sectors, including municipal services, healthcare, and education. The findings suggest that higher transparency of the local authorities is generally associated with lower levels of bribery in the housing and communal services sector (estimation coefficient = –0.204226), in registration and licensing institutions (–0.5353756), in healthcare institutions (–0.2032171), and experience of bribing local authorities (–0.2505674). The analysis concludes that enhancing transparency may significantly reduce corrupt practices within local government operations, thereby strengthening public trust and bringing Ukraine closer to meeting European Union standards.

Acknowledgment
Serhiy Lyeonov, Serhii Drozd, and Yaroslаv Reshetniak thank the project 0123U101945 “National security of Ukraine through prevention of financial fraud and money laundering: war and post-war challenges” for carrying out their part of this research.
This study was funded by the European Union grant “NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia” (No. 09I03-03-V01-00130) and project VEGA – 1/0392/23 “Changes in the approach to the creation of companies’ distribution management concepts influenced by the effects of social and economic crises caused by the global pandemic and increased security risks.”