Leonid Melnyk

In the context of transition to the sustainable development actually justified and economically balanced managerial decisions are worth to be introduced into activity of the business entities. First of all, it is connected with the formation of the social standards by the Ukrainian government. Establishment of the minimum salary for the employees of the national economic complex of the country is one of the main components of these standards. This indicator influences both the increase of the population’s social welfare provision level and on the economy of the economic entities, including business representatives. Research was conducted in Ukraine. The main trends of the social welfare provision of the business sector entities, including the experience of Hungary and Russia, were analyzed in this article. The main rules of the effective social welfare provision, accounting the necessities of the business environment, were formed. Economical analysis of the retrospective and predictive information about the payroll payment and payment of social contributions was made. The influence of the increase of the minimum salary on the activity of business entities, taking into account raised minimum salary, was analyzed. The regressive model of the payroll budget dependence, accounting minimum salary and social contributions’ level increase, was designed. Obtained calculation results showed high level of tax burden on the business sector entities, so, organization-economic measures of tax burden decrease on the business entities were offered. They took into account minimum salary growth for their employees in the context of the transition to the sustainable development. Recommendations concerning the further scientific researches on the topic of the article were offered.

The main objective of this research is to study the role and impact of fiscal decentralization on the macroeconomic stability of the country. The paper analyzes and systematizes approaches to the definition of ‘macroeconomic stability’ concept. The key factors that impact macroeconomic stability are identified. In the framework of this research, the authors identify fiscal decentralization as one of the factors affecting macroeconomic stability. To determine the strength and statistical significance of the above mentioned relationship, the authors suggest presenting macroeconomic stability as a functional dependency between macroeconomic stability and the level of fiscal decentralization, which is described by the following variables: the growth rate of money supply, investment and openness of the economy, fiscal decentralization. In this case, it is suggested to determine the level of fiscal decentralization in three directions: expenditure decentralization, revenue decentralization and expenditure decentralization simultaneously.

The main goal of the article is to analyze the role and influence of economic freedom on macroeconomic stability. For this purpose, the authors used the integrated index of economic freedom, calculated by the Heritage Foundation and Democracy Index. It is noted that this index indicator was calculated by the experts from the World Bank using the index of voice and accountability. In the paper, the authors used the multinational panel dataset for 11 countries of the EU for the purpose of checking the correlation between economic freedom, democracy and macroeconomic stability. It should be highlighted that the abovementioned 11 countries are related by the fluctuation of economic growth during the transformation process (1996–2016) from communist party to the democracy and political pluralism. In addition, the authors proposed to add the indicators of political stability and trade openness, which allowed to take into account implementation of flexible macroeconomic instruments, including monetary policy, which towards increasing the economic growth, employment and financial development of the countries. The findings are directed received using the regression equation with fixed and random effects showed the high level of correspondence of the model used with the original observations. Despite the chosen approach to estimate the macroeconomic stability, the findings showed that there is a positive and statistically significant impact of economic freedom and democracy on macroeconomic stability.

The development of human civilization is related to the constant change of economic formations, and the current social and economic situation is determined by such concepts as Society 5.0, Fourth, and Fifth Industrial Revolutions (FIR, FiIR). The paper aims to estimate the change of human role in each economic formation caused by industrial revolutions. A structured review methodology with a focus on biological, labor, and personal entity of human within the industrial revolutions is used. The description of the changes between the biological, labor, and personality entities of human in various socio-economic formations is discussed. The human as a biological entity is not changed in the first four industrial revolutions, while the FiIR tries to change the biological entity through augmenting the physical capacity. The human as a labor entity is not changed in the first three industrial formations, while the FIR tries to replace the majority of physical human jobs and opens the gate for creative economy and decisions-making. The direct labor participation is minimized within FIR since the economic systems move to the transition to the dominant role of cyber-physical systems. The personal human development is triggered within the FiIR, since informational diversity in economic systems is actualized, and conditions for creative jobs within the creative economy are formed. The biological, labor, and personality entities of human are sequentially actualized within the economic formation caused by industrial revolutions.

Rapid economic reforms and proper GDP growth in China has affected the regional development of Chinese provinces. This study aims to estimate the degree of economic and environmental disparities within Chinese provinces for developing policy recommendations of regional transformation. The reduced log-linear specification of endogenous growth model is used for the estimation of convergence rates within Chinese provinces. The empirical results prove that an increase of 1% in GDP per capita basic year reduces the economic growth rate by 0.1% in the reference year. Thus, the ratio of the average per capita income in the wealthiest group to poorest provinces accounted for the factor 9.6 in 1995 and factor 4.1 in the year 2015, which means a reduction of disproportionate development. Environmental convergence trends were also found and less polluted provinces eventually increase emissions at higher rates than the initially polluted ones. With the pass of time, all provinces do move to the same steady state in environmental parameters. The speed of the economic and environmental convergence in China provinces is rather slow, and the economic growth was achieved by great sacrifices of an environment, since all provinces are striving to the same steady state in terms of pollution increase. The industrialized regions due to the presence of significant financial resources should pay more attention to the protection of the environment using all the available economic potential. At the same time, both initially poor provinces and rich have to develop more profoundly agriculture, tourism, recreation, and other environmentally friendly industries to improve economic performance.

There are continuous research and practical interest to combine different renewable sources within one Smart Grid network. The paper aims to estimate the influence of key economic and social drivers of renewable energy and Smart Grid promotion in OECD member countries. The random effect of the generalized least squares method was used to estimate the empirical model based on the World Bank, OECD, Heritage Foundation, and World Energy Council datasets for a panel of 36 OECD counties. For the empirical estimation, the dependent variables considered are energy renewable electricity output and energy trilemma index, taken as two proxies for Smart Grid development. The results suggest that an increase in GDP p. c. in national economies by 10,000 USD leads on average to a 3.9% decrease in renewable electricity output during 2001–2015. The richer the society, the less renewable energy sources were used for power generation in a group of OECD countries. The last is also supported by the fact that gross fixed capital formation treated as a percentage value of GDP is negatively correlated with structural changes in renewable energy output. The empirical conclusion is that during the study period, OECD countries were mainly oriented to economic growth, which was achieved by consuming non-renewable energy resources, and limited attention was paid to sustainability and Millennium Development Goals. The paper provides policy recommendations for Smart Grid development and points in the future research within OECD countries.

Acknowledgments
Comments from the Editor and anonymous referees have been gratefully acknowledged. Leonid Melnyk gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (0118U003578). Oleksandra Kubatko gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (0119U100766) and National Research Foundation of Ukraine (2020.01/0135).