Yuliia Yehorova

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 study aims to assess the state of Ukraine’s foreign economic security and the challenges associated with its ensuring. The integrated assessment methodology of the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine was employed, which is based on a quantitative analysis of indicators that reflect the state of foreign economic security. It involves the characteristics of each indicator in terms of stimulators or destimulators, their normalization, and consideration of weighting coefficients. In order to identify the long-term trends, the official national accounts statistics, data from the World Bank, and the Economic Development Observatory for the period 2004–2023 were employed; the assessment is based on ten indicators. The results demonstrate that the main factors affecting the foreign economic security index are global economic crises, domestic political changes, and a full-scale war with russia. At the same time, the growth of foreign economic security is recorded in the period of stabilization during the implementation of structural reforms: 2005–2008 – the period after the Orange Revolution, 2014–2016 – the period of growth after the Revolution of Dignity, 2021 – post-pandemic recovery. In 2022–2023, the security index declined to 31.5% and 35.7%, respectively, as a consequence of the outbreak of a full-scale russian-Ukrainian war. The findings also emphasize the need to develop domestic capacities to ensure the sustainability of foreign economic activity, as well as the importance of maintaining and planning national export infrastructure in the face of global challenges.

Acknowledgment
This article is published as an output of the project VEGA 1/0392/23: “Changes in the approach to the development of distribution management concepts of companies influenced by the impact of social and economic crises caused by the global pandemic and increased security risks” and funded by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under the project No.09103-03-V01-00042.
This study was financially supported by the NATO SPS Program “Security of territorial communities: evidence from the Eastern European countries”.
In addition, this article is published as an output of the project “Economic bases for managing Ukraine’s debt security during martial law” (No. 0121U112685).

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.”