Oleksandr Dluhopolskyi

In the 21st century, in addition to the generally well-known indicators of material well-being, in the modern paradigm of the welfare state, the quality of the ecological environment is gaining an ever-increasing role. Besides that, the modern definition of welfare state takes into account not only environmental dimension, but also the quality of institutions through the governance system that affects the supply of environmental goods. The study provides the classification of countries according to indicators that can ensure the identification of welfare states and the assessment of the classification role of the criteria for environmental state.
The strong direct correlation between environmental state and government efficiency has been established. The results of the classification of the studied countries obtained by k-means clustering methods indicate the possibility of using the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), Government Effectiveness Index (GEI) and government expenditures indicators as complementary attributes to the classical criteria for the welfare state.
The level of country EPI can be regarded as an important complementary criterion for the welfare state. The country environmental state is much more determined by the government efficiency, the quality of state institutions and their activities, rather than by an extensive increase in the funding of such institutions and environmental measures.

The article contains a thorough study of tourist flows in Ukraine during the last 18 years. The tendencies of the development of international tourism during the last 20 years and their influence on the development of tourism in Ukraine have been explored. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of inbound tourist flows. The negative dynamics of tourist arrivals in Ukraine led to the construction of a forecast model for the development of this component of tourism activity with the aim of an objective assessment of future tourist arrivals and the adoption of effective management decisions on improving the situation of tourism in Ukraine. Tourist destinations today are rigorously competing for consumer interest in tourism products. In view of this, tourist facilities operating in the tourist market place particular emphasis on the elements of tourism marketing (product, price, distribution, advertising, human capital, actual data, processes).
Modern forecasting systems and methods have been used to build a forecast of tourism development in Ukraine and, in particular, arrivals of foreign tourists to Ukraine. An analytical forecasting model was built by the system of CurveExpert in the form of a polynomial function, analytical forecasting models were built by the system of computer algebra Maple in the form of piecewise linear and piecewise polynomial functions. Numerical prediction models in the MathCAD system using different types of spline-interpolation and predictive functions have been constructed. A comparative analysis of the results of forecasting in different systems was carried out. The results of the comparative analysis give confidence in the development of inbound tourism in Ukraine.

This article analyzes the influence of Internet and e-commerce diffusion in the development of European countries. Conclusions about the faster spread of Internet technologies in the modern world, especially in developing countries, due to the achievement of so-called “saturation points” by developed countries of the world (e-commerce markets in Ukraine and Poland are at the stage of formation and active growth) have been made. The purpose of this article is to construct an economic and mathematical toolkit for investigating the impact of the Internet and e-commerce on indicators of economic development of the country. The methods of scientific analysis, description and synthesis, modeling and statistical analysis are used in the research. Models of technologies diffusion have been considered, and as a basis, the distribution of the Internet in Poland, Austria and Ukraine is forecasted.
Findings suggest that Internet technology spread has a significant impact on the development of e-commerce, and Internet development in different countries of the world. This study uses the classification of countries according to the World Bank Country Classification, which, since 2005, has ranked countries by GDP per capita into four groups:
1) low-income;
2) lower-middle-income;
3) upper-middle-income;
4) high-income.
It has been found that the pace of Internet technology and broadband Internet access spread is a lot higher in low-income countries due to the later beginning of the diffusion process, while in the high-income countries, the peak of Internet development has passed and the technology spread has slowed down.

Strengthening the integration of higher education, research, and innovation is a crucial requirement of time. The entrepreneurial university today is considered and analyzed as a promising model for their combination. The educational and scientific systems of many countries are faced with the task of converging all vertices of the “knowledge triangle.” The problem of Ukrainian educational and scientific system is a necessity to implement the concept of formation of the innovation and entrepreneurial model of a modern university, which will enable the effective implementation of administrative reforms in this field. The article aims to analyze the impact of innovative environmental factors on the development of entrepreneurial universities in Ukraine, based on correlation and panel regression analysis. The method of quantitative analysis (panel regression) is used to formulate the key results of the article. The results show that the growth of government expenditures by 1% leads to an increase in the Global Innovation Index by 0.375 in 4 years. Also, every additional 1% of people working with new technologies increases the level of Global Innovation Index by 0.75 annually. Despite European trends, Ukrainian educational environment does not contribute to the development of innovation and entrepreneurial universities (the education expenditures are ineffective). The research provides a vector for understanding the implementation of the most effective strategies of promising innovation and investment development of education and science in Ukrainian universities, considering their existing potential and contemporary world trends of development.

The purpose of this study was to explore the indirect and direct relationships of Big-5 and dark personality traits (i.e., extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism, and spitefulness) with job performance via perfectionism, stress, and social media addiction. A total of 514 private sector employees filled out a query sheet that included the assessment tools for the variables. Path analysis using a multiple mediation model indicated that neuroticism was negatively directly and indirectly related to job performance via stress and social media addiction. Machiavellianism and spitefulness were directly positively associated with job performance, and Machiavellianism-related higher social media addiction diminished the direct positive effect of Machiavellianism on job performance, indicating complex relationships. Furthermore, stress, social media addiction, and perfectionism were related to different personality traits positively and negatively. Findings of the present study suggest that an anti-social personality may promote higher job performance. However, job performance may be adversely affected by the adverse consequences relating to these traits. Professionals and firms that attempt to increase job performance should take anti-social personality traits and their complex effects on job performance into account.

The new system of educational programs’ accreditation and the establishment of the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance (NAQA) as an independent regulator has led to the demand for professional experts who can evaluate the educational programs of universities at a qualitatively new level. The paper aims to analyze the formation of the expert environment in Ukraine by conducting numerous training in various formats, as well as to assess the relationship between training and the quality of accreditation visits. The correlation analysis was used to substantiate the conclusions. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the experience of training experts in the accreditation of study programs in Ukrainian higher education institutions, the results of a pro-active approach by the NAQA in 2019–2021 were presented. It is shown that the accreditation system has been working without red tape, the taint of corruption, using transparency mechanisms, and expert advice since the end of 2019. The accreditation format according to the ESG-2015 standards made it possible to form an expert environment in Ukraine in a short time and encourage changes in higher education. Despite many pieces of training and consultations, many experts and representatives of the Sectoral Expert Council (SEC), evaluating study programs, still provide criticism, prejudice, and not advice and assistance. To minimize such negative practices, NAQA regularly conducts online webinars, briefings for expert groups and heads of study programs, and rotates experts and members of the SEC.

The year 2020 showed certain unpreparedness of the world’s countries for the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the unpopular measures of closed borders and total quarantine. The leading social component that opposes a pandemic is the healthcare system. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to assess the ability of European countries to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The cluster modeling was performed using the STATISTICA 7.0 package. As a result of modeling, the studied countries were divided into 4 clusters. The first cluster included nine countries. According to the smallest distance, the core countries in this cluster are Ireland and Bulgaria. The second cluster included seven European countries. The core country in this cluster is Sweden. Five of the studied countries were part of the third cluster. The core country in this cluster is Estonia. The fourth cluster included economically developed European countries with a Scandinavian social economy model and countries with a transitive social economy model. The core country in the fourth cluster is Germany. The recommendations for European countries can be introducing educational activities at the state level among the population on the importance of vaccination against COVID-19, increasing the staffing of the healthcare system, conducting the audit on the effectiveness of using public funds, and developing the medical infrastructure.