Anna Vorontsova

To date, the promotion of local development of the territorial communities by means of the financial policy tools is one of the priority directions of scientific research not only in Ukraine, but also throughout the world. The article presents the results of the study of the impact of the participatory financing (attraction of the financial resources of community members, central and local budgets and the international donors) on the social capital of the territorial communities of Sumy region on the basis of the results of two phases of the project “Community-based Approach to Local Development”, which has been implemented in Ukraine by the United Nations Development Program since 2007. The main purpose of the article is to confirm the hypothesis that the participatory financing contributes to the social mobilization of the community residents, which leads to the activation of the “dormant” potential of collective actions and the desire of people to help themselves, as well as to improve some indicators of social capital. The difference-in-differences method and the multivariate regression analysis were used for the study. According to the results of the study, the characteristics of social capital, such as (anti)paternalism, the presence of traditions in community, involvement in social activities, collective action and cooperation are the most affected by the impact of participatory financing.

The concept of learning cities and regions is recently becoming widespread both in the European and global theory of regional development acting as a tool for successful local socio-economic development management of a city and region, development of their human potential, the basis of the regional education policy of countries. Analysis of theoretical principles and, particularly, the practice of implementing the concept of learning cities and regions for Ukraine is currently a necessary condition for its sustainable development, full entry into the European and global economy, as well as the educational space. All mentioned above makes relevant the research of theory and practice of the European and world regional education policy on the example of learning cities and regions. The article analyzes the potential of the Composite Learning Index and European Lifelong Learning Index to monitor the progress of lifelong learning as a tool for local development management and proposes the list of indicators and measures – the Ukrainian Lifelong Learning Index – adapted to the Ukrainian education area.

Almost all human activity spheres, from the health care system to the education system, were unprepared for the pandemic. This, in turn, has slowed down the progress in achieving sustainable development goals. The Sustainable Development Goals 4 “Quality Education” and 8 “Decent Work and Economic Growth” were particularly vulnerable. In addition, the widespread concern was caused in the context of the transition to a “knowledge-based economy”. This paper analyzes the readiness of the scientific community to provide preconditions for the acceleration of these SDGs achievements. To do this, a meta-analysis of the academic literature on SDG 4, SDG 8, and the knowledge-based economy during 2015–2021 was conducted. Several special methods and instruments were used, including Scopus, WoS, VosViewer, Publish or Perish, Google Trends, and Google Books Ngram Viewer. The results show the inability of the modern academic community to provide a theoretical and empirical framework for a successful transition to a knowledge-based economy, taking into account the need to achieve sustainability. This is partly due to the relative subject novelty and the lack of academic attention. The challenges posed by the pandemic (lockdowns, unemployment, closing of educational institutions, financial flows reorientation, etc.) together with potential threats (new pandemic, climate change, population displacement, armed conflicts, etc.) necessitate a radical intensification of academic activity in economics to achieve SDGs.

This paper explores the influence of traditional and ESG stock market indices on a country’s net international investment position. To do this, different methods, including ANOVA analysis, multiply regression analysis, correlation analysis, VAR-analysis and R/S-analysis, as well as the Granger causality test, are applied to quarterly data on the net international investment position, traditional and ESG indices from Finland, Sweden, France, Spain and Ukraine over the period 2005–2021. The results of descriptive statistics show that ESG indices are more volatile than traditional, but these differences are statistically insignificant according to ANOVA analysis. Correlation analysis provides direct evidence that ESG indices are highly correlated with their traditional analogues (correlation level varies from 0.88 to 0.96). Regression analysis results show that traditional and ESG stock market indices have no significant impact on the net international investment position. ESG stock market indices and net international investment position data are persistent, and autoregressive models can be applied to these data sets. On average, Hurst exponent is above 0.75 for the case of ESG indices and above 0.85 for the net investment position. This paper provides recommendations to improve the responsible investment framework.

Acknowledgment
Alex Plastun gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (0121U100473).

The most vital problems of humanity mentioned in SDGs are the consequences of climate change and biodiversity loss and problems with access to water and forest resources. Although there is a deep understanding of the problems, there are reasons that do not allow finding swift solutions, and the increasing funding gap for the relevant SDGs is one of them. This study aims to establish the connection between environmental protection investments and the achievement of environmentally oriented sustainable development goals across 31 European countries (26 EU Member States, 3 EFTA Countries, and Ukraine as a Candidate to EU). The paper employed the PLS-SEM approach. The obtained results proved that the accumulated amount of environmental protection investments does not have a statistically significant relationship with the integral indicators of SDG 6 “Clear water and sanitation,” SDG 13 “Climate action,” and SDG 15 “Life on land” (the coefficient of determination, the path coefficient, and the reliability coefficients were insignificant). The study of a similar relationship between the level and the directions of SDGs 6, 13, and 15 achievements also did not reveal any significant results. As the last step of the analysis, the hypothesis about a relationship between environmental protection investments and Environmental Performance Index components was also rejected. Therefore, the statistical significance and relevance of the analyzed indicators were not confirmed. Based on this, a conclusion was made about the insufficiency of investment resources for environmental protection to overcome the gap in achieving environmentally-oriented SDGs.

In the conditions of the war of russia against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, Ukrainian universities are playing roles that were not characteristic of them in peacetime. To the greatest extent, this concerns the university’s third mission, serving society and responding to its urgent needs. The purpose of this study is to identify and characterize new meaningful directions for implementing the third mission of the university in the conditions of war and post-war reconstruction. The study uses quantitative and qualitative bibliometric analysis combining various methods, in particular, quantitative and dynamic analysis of publications and citations, keyword analysis, cluster analysis and content analysis of publications.
The study’s results proved the lack of conceptual studies devoted to the role of universities in the war and post-war reconstruction. The main clusters of implementing the third mission of universities and the existing and potential areas of activity of Ukraine’s universities during the war and post-war reconstruction that belong to them were determined. In conclusion, it is substantiated that a new dimension of the mission of universities is being formed, which is at the stage of its formation and needs time for the necessary transformations. Depending on the consequences of the war in Ukraine, it can be a separate cluster of the third mission of universities, and the selection of a new fourth mission of universities, dedicated to peacebuilding and the role of the university during the war and post-war recovery.

Acknowledgment
Yuriy Petrushenko gratefully acknowledges support from the Kirkland Research Program. The research
was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (No. 0121U109553).

In today’s fast-paced business environment, integrating sustainability into financial decision-making has been a key driver of change. As stakeholders increasingly demand greater corporate transparency and accountability, regulatory bodies have stepped in to ensure that sustainability reporting is standardized and robust. This paper aims to establish the relationship between the sustainability-related disclosure rules and the dynamic indicators of the financial market. The object of the study is 74 countries of the world, which are grouped into developed and developing countries. The time period is 2021, for the stock market capitalization indicators – 2020, as the most recent years with available data. The research methods are normality tests (Shapiro-Wilk and Shapiro-Francia test), comparison methods (Student’s t-test and Mann-Whitney U test, regression analysis with dummy variables), linear and non-linear correlation and regression analysis (logarithmic, polynomial). The results obtained confirmed that the sustainability-related disclosure rules are higher in developed countries than in developing ones. At the same time, in developed countries, the growth of such requirements affects the increase in stock price volatility, stock market capitalization, foreign direct and portfolio investments. For developing countries, there is also an increase in the stock market capitalization, portfolio investments and the volume of stock trading. Recognizing these trends can benefit both financial market regulators and participants to encourage the formation of a transparent and efficient financial market, thereby mitigating the problems associated with information asymmetry.

The world economy is in an unprecedented situation, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the health care crisis. It’s currently difficult to predict all the consequences, but there are undoubtful changes in migration flows, unemployment and poverty increase, and their impact on national economies and globally. The paper aimed at analyzing the cases of educational reforms in different countries, revealing new trends in education and learning that may prevent labor migration or mitigate it. To support feasibility of the study, a bibliometric analysis was implemented on the basis of Scopus tools and VOSviewer software. In this paper, the content analysis of several cases in a sphere of educational reform was performed, namely educational systems of some EU countries and their former members (UK, France, Finland) as well as the most developed world economies (USA, China, and Japan). The distance learning is considered as fundamentally necessary in today’s conditions and a milestone of the global educational system development. The paper investigates the essence and distribution of mass online courses as a typical type of distance learning. The case of virtual exchange that was managed and organized by several institutions within the COIL initiative was also analyzed the alternative to traditional learning. The recommendations about the further development of educational systems were made, as well as suggestions about the competitiveness of national economies due to the migration process.

Acknowledgment and funding
This research was funded by a grant from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine “Reforming the lifelong learning system in Ukraine for the prevention of the labor emigration: a coopetition model of institutional partnership” (No. 0120U102001).

Education is a core element of the Sustainable Development Concept. It is not only because of the declaration of SDG 4 within the 2030 Agenda but also its embeddedness in other goals, targets, and indicators. Thus, the study aims to generalize approaches to define the relationship between the efficiency of the strategy of sustainable development of the national economy and state regulation of education. The research is accomplished for 14 Central and Eastern European countries (2006–2016) using the combination of principal components method and parametric method of stochastic frontier analysis in the software package STATA 11 and FRONTIER 4.1. As a result, the empirical proofs of the strong and adequate link between the efficiency of the sustainable development strategy of the national economy and state regulation of education are identified. The technical efficiency indexes were also calculated that allowed forming three clusters for Central and Eastern European countries distributed by the level of state regulation of education and efficiency of sustainable development strategy implementation. It helps to distinguish the main measures to reform the state regulation of education in Ukraine considering the experience of Slovenia, Poland, the Czech Republic, countries that proved to be the leaders in a sphere of sustainable development strategy implementation. The recommendations for further improvements in educational policies were defined. For instance, effective and sustainable state regulation of education should focus on decentralizing education, developing private-public partnerships, stimulating adult education development, etc.

Acknowledgment and funding
This research was funded by the grant from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine “Reforming the lifelong learning system in Ukraine for the prevention of the labor emigration: a coopetition model of institutional partnership” (No. 0120U102001).

This paper explores the perceived resilience of russia’s economy under severe sanctions, investigating the potential falsification of economic data to demonstrate the growth. The hypothesis is that the relationship between the official inflation rate and the FMCG deflator index during 2019–2021 significantly differs from that of 2022–2024. Statistical methods, such as correlation analysis, Granger causality tests, and differences tests (e.g., t-tests and Wilcoxon tests), are used along with vector autoregressive (VAR) models and robust linear regressions. The study covers the pre-invasion period (2019–2021) and the post-invasion period (2022–2024), focusing on indicators like the official inflation rate, inflation expectations, CPI, and the FMCG deflator index. Findings reveal a shift from a direct to an inverse correlation between official inflation and the FMCG deflator post-2022, suggesting data manipulation. Pre-2022 models predict inflation 2-3 times higher than both post-2022 models and official statistics, raising concerns about the reliability of russia’s economic data. Further research should explore indirect metrics, such as electricity production and cargo shipments, for additional evidence of data falsification.

Acknowledgments
Alex Plastun gratefully acknowledges financial support from the New Europe College (NEC), the Center for Advanced Study, and Sumy State University.
Anna Vorontsova gratefully acknowledges financial support from Sumy State University.