Comparison of the digital economy development parameters in the EU countries in the context of bridging the digital divide

The analysis of the financial technologies introduction has proved that their application over-complicates the institutional structure of the global financial system. As a result, usual functional relationships cease to operate, new institutes and interdependencies appear, and systemic risks increase. In this context, the system instability increases, resulting in a transition to a new institutional status. The analysis of the financial technologies impact on the stability of financial system shows that the lack of institutional support for new financial technologies is the most important catalyst for the financial industry destabilization and the formation of financial bubbles in various market segments.
The ways to reduce the negative impact of financial technologies on the financial system stability (such as development of international prudential standards; revision of the licensing regime for financial companies; “regulatory sandboxes”, which test new technologies, business models and algorithms underlying the Fintech innovations; legal regulation of ownership of digital tokens; and clear definition of the blockchain technology in various areas of life, etc.) have been proposed.

This study applied Altman Z-score model to assess the bankruptcy risk of a set of multidisciplinary enterprises of various types, mainly small and medium enterprises, with data taken from official financial reports of 180 enterprises in Soc Trang province. The binary logistic regression was employed to assess the impact of non-financial and financial factors on the bankruptcy risk of enterprises. The research findings showed that both the non-financial factors such as business area, types and size of the business, the educational level of managers and executors and other characteristics, and the financial factors (indicators) such as earnings before tax, net profit/equity ratio, earnings before interest and tax/total assets ratio, equity/total debt ratio, affect the bankruptcy risk of enterprises. Predicting the bankruptcy risk and measuring its determinants play an important role not only as an effective managing tool of the business, but also as evidence for policymakers to support the sustainable development of business.

The study of various aspects of social economy is stipulated by the fact that the focus of any economic system is the human being as the main object and the result of economic activity. The purpose of this paper is to cluster of social economies of the countries throughout the world with distinguishing the models of social economy for transition economies under globalization conditions.
The results of research represent four clusters of social economy that prove validity of classification of 4 classic models of social economy: liberal, Scandinavian, corporatist, and Mediterranean. While the most developed countries have effective models of social economy, there is still no clear concept of social development for transition economies. This paper deals with social economy clustering of different countries with the view to determinate the place of transition economies in social metrics of global economy.
Our study is limited to the number of countries – 40 countries of the world, mainly European, and timeframes – 2015 and 2016.
The obtained results could be taken into account by governments when developing and implementing new social policy for transition economies considering the experience of countries with classical social models. The authors propose the main practical tools for transition social model.
It is proposed to distinguish one more model of social economy – the transition model, typical for transition economies that implement social reforms and has some common features.