JAQM Volume 13, Issue 4 - December 30, 2018

Pdf Version

Contents

Structural Insights and Recent Trends for the Romanian LabourMarket
Ionela-Roxana GLAVAN

The aim of the present paper is to highlight the recent trends and structural insights for the Romanian labour market. The analysis reveals how gender and educational level influences these trends and how they contribute to the overall structural differences. The differences revealed in between the groups determined by gender and education level, are further disseminated in order to propose adequate economic and social active labour market policies for Romania.

Are Romanian Employees Motivated by the Same Things? An Empirical Perspective of Herzberg Theory among Employees from Public Versus Private Sector
Alexandra BEIU, Adriana AnaMaria DAVIDESCU

The objective of this study was to highlight the main motivational factors of the Herzberg theory and to investigate the differences of employees’ perceptions from public and private sectors related to those factors using the opinions of 301 Romanian employees from different sectors of activity. More concrete, the study aims to respond to the following questions: what do people want from their jobs? Do they just want a higher salary? Or do they want security, good relationships with co-workers, opportunities for growth and advancement – or something else altogether? In order to do that, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were applied in order to extract the main motivational factors and furthermore their impact on the overall level of job motivation was quantified using the regression analysis. Finally, using the main motivational determinants of the Romanian employees potential differences between employees from public vs. private sectors were captured using t-test. The exploratory factor analysis results pointed out the existence of a 4 factor structure highlighting the positive impact of both growth and hygiene factors on the overall level of motivation. Therefore, recognition, advancement, job security and rewards were considered to be the most relevant motivational factors for the Romanian employees. The results of confirmatory factor analysis emphasized the role of work itself, responsibility, working conditions, benefit and salary on increasing the overall level of motivation for the Romanian employees. Testing the impact of all these factors on the overall level of job satisfaction, the empirical results revealed the significance of recognition, responsibility, job security and rewards as the main motivational factors. Analyzing comparatively the opinions of Romanian employees from both sectors related to the main drivers of job satisfaction, it ca be highlighted the fact that job security, recognition and responsibility were considered to be the most important for public sector employees, while rewards was considered to be more relevant for the private sector employees. The empirical results of t-test revealed statistical differences between public and private sector employees regarding responsibility and recognition. Public sector employees tend to give a higher importance to those factors, while for employees from private sector other factors as being relevant for their satisfaction. Job security and rewards do not exhibited any statistical difference among employees from public versus private sector.

The Potential of the EU Economies in Attracting FDI – A Composite Index based Approach
Roberto DELL’ANNO, Vasile Alecsandru STRAT

The paper presents a composite index which measures the potential of the 28 European Union (EU) member countries in attracting foreign direct investments (FDI), for the period 2000 – 2012. Several new variables (in respect to other aggregated Indices) linked to the latest development policies of the European Union are considered in the construction process of the proposed index. By comparing several versions of the constructed index with some of the most notorious indicators used to measure the FDI attractiveness, we find that the PCA (principal component analysis) version of our index shows the best performance in tracking the FDI activity of the EU economies. The empirical results show that the FDI activity is concentrated in the developed economies, confirming therefore previous results presented in the literature. The construction methodology of our index allows the identification of the main characteristics of the European economies which should be taken in consideration by the national governments when forging policies for increasing the FDI attractiveness of their economies. Among other practical applications of the proposed index, it can be used as a starting point for identifying benchmark economies which can help policymakers identify best practices and innovative approaches for the areas where their economies are lagging behind.

Does Renewable Energy Affect the Economic Growth of Algeria
Salah Eddine SARI HASSOUN, Mohammed MEKIDICHE

The energy plays a major role in the world economic system, as they support the improvement of the well-being of the population and the development of economic growth. In the light of this statement, Algeria is now working on new incentives that can hasten to introduction of renewable energy in its energy system and then satisfying its future energy demand and the energy shortage. In this study, we investigated with the autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) model and Granger causality the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in Algeria during the period of 1995-2016. We employed the two main variables, renewable energy consumption, and the gross domestic product (GDP), and the four control variables, fossil energy consumption, gross fixed capital formation, labour force, and international trade. We found that the renewable energy has a positive influence on economic growth in Algeria, but we showed with Granger causality that there’s no evidence of causality between renewable energy consumption and (GDP), approving the neutrality hypothesis.

Analysis of Frequency of Savings among Tomato Farmers in Ghana
Daniel AIDOO-MENSAH

The study sought to examine the frequency of savings among 496 tomato farmers. These were randomly selected from 6 districts in 3 regions of Ghana. Multinomial logistic regression was employed to identify the determinants underlying the respondents’ frequency of savings – weekly, monthly and seasonally. The results showed that amount saved per period, number of years of education and engagement in non-farm income generating activities significantly influenced farmers’ savings frequencies. The findings of the study are quite significant as it takes the decision to save beyond the suggested two-stage sequential process to include a third stage, which is the time horizon of savings. The findings revealed that rural households have the tendency to lengthen their savings time horizon by holding onto their surplus funds particularly in the event of worsening future consumption. On the other hand, the anticipation of a gloomy future as a result of poverty may induce the rural householder to shorten his/her savings time horizon, that is, reduce the timeframe he/she holds onto surplus funds and quickly save such funds. Finally the study suggests education as a catalyst to create a desirable behaviour of saving “now” (weekly or monthly) rather than procrastinating savings to the “future” that is, saving seasonally.

Actuarial Modeling of Insurance Premium for Patients with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL)
Gurprit GROVER, Parmeet Kumar VINIT, Arpan Kumar THAKUR

The aim of this paper is to introduce a cancer cover plan for patients suffering from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). Cure fraction model is used to accentuate the proportion of long term survivors in cohort of patients. As substantial proportion of patients are long-term survivors from disease, so here we suggest an insurance plan that is beneficial for patients and viable for insurer as well. Currently insurers have restricted the insurance plan only if an individual is free from cancer. Keeping the Cure fraction model in mind, we propose an insurance plan which includes the patients who are suffering from ALL. The premium at various follow up times for patients suffering from ALL are determined on the basis of a deterministic model by using survival estimates from Kaplan-Meier survival curve.