The role of stokvels in South Africa: a case of economic transformation of a municipality

Problems of influence of informatization and globalization processes on all the components of human economic activity and, accordingly, on a fundamental and rapid change in the requirements for educational and qualification characteristics of the specialists involved in the production of goods and services in general, and the mechanisms and instruments of providing educational services themselves, in particular, are quite rightly the focus of the researchers. Such a structural change of the national economy necessitated a substantial correction of the Ukrainian higher education system. Аs a result of the study, the influence of socio-cultural factors on the organization of institutional support of the Ukrainian educational space is revealed. The specific features of the institutional structure of the higher education system of Ukraine are highlighted and discussed. Based on a comparative approach, the article presents an analysis of the institutional blocks of the higher education system. The content of transformations in the mechanisms of structural and functional complementarity of institutional elements of the higher education system of Ukraine is revealed, namely the maintenance of structural complementarity of elements of the institutional system in the sphere of industrial relations is revealed, the peculiarities of the institutional block of financing are analyzed, the specifics of the institutional block of corporate governance is determined, the content of the institutional block of production models is revealed, the peculiarities of the training of the teaching staff of the higher education institution within the institutional block “training, preparation, and advanced training” are determined. The understanding of the transformation in the process of economic globalization of the role and importance of higher education systems as a key tool for ensuring the entry of the national economy into the nucleus, proto-periphery or periphery (orientation to knowledge transfer) of the capitalist world-system was improved.

The stable functioning of the public finance system requires a rational regulatory apparatus. The central bank occupies a special place in this system. Science and practice prove that the central bank’s political and economic independence determines its effectiveness. Thus, it is crucial to determine the prerequisites for ensuring its independence. The study aims to assess the influence of governance quality on the central bank’s independence, considering the variance of the socio-political development of countries. The analysis was conducted based on 53 countries. Panel regression modeling with random effects was chosen as a research method. The analysis approach involves calculations for the groups of countries that differ in social and political development parameters according to the following criteria: the initial level of the central bank independence; level of human development; political rights freedom; level of civil liberties; and political regime.
Socio-political factors significantly affect the central bank’s independence in the following conditions: a high initial level of independence of the central bank, a high level of human development, and an average level of political and civil freedom. At the same time, the governance quality ensures the growth of the central bank’s independence regardless of the countries’ political regime. Three factors have the most significant influence on ensuring the independence of the central bank, namely “government efficiency,” “quality of regulation,” and “rule of law.”

This paper aims to analyze the evolution of the leading commercial insurance company Česká pojišťovna on the Czech insurance market in the years 1947–2021. Its evolution was closely linked to the processes of building socialism in the 1950s and the federalization of Czechoslovakia at the end of the 1960s. The paper uses qualitative research methods, methods of description and comparison, as well as local micro-historical analyses shall be applied. The main features of insurance products in the period of the totalitarian regime are characterized. Both the economic transformation in the 1990s and globalization in the last decades have had a radical effect on the further development of the analyzed company Česká pojišťovna. In the period after 1989, the development is marked by a focus on changes in the shareholder structure of the analyzed insurance company, and the development of its market share is shown. As a result of demonopolization, new companies could emerge, creating a competitive environment. The leading commercial insurance company Česká pojišťovna’s market share gradually began to decline.

Acknowledgment
This paper was supported by the project SGS/24/2022 “Financial stability determinants of the selected financial institutions”.