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This paper aims to study through a comprehensive set of socioeconomic indicators the regional level of well-being achieved in Romania, and monitor the improvements and disparities in well-being after a decade of accession to the European Union.

A dashboard of 20 socioeconomic indicators for measuring nine dimensions of well-being for Romanian counties is proposed. Using the Adjusted Mazziotta-Pareto method are built composite indicators, which allow us to assess the trend of overall welfare scores for each county. The data are collected at the county level, for 42 counties, and each year from 2006 to 2017, from administrative sources.

The overall well-being index has an increasing trend for all counties, but the growth rate varies from one county to another. The economic factors, geographic location and share of the urban population matter. For most counties, the evolution of well-being scores is below that recorded at the country level. Romania has registered significant improvements in health, housing, income and access to public utilities dimensions. The counties are ranked by level of well-being. Some empirical measures suggest a slight tendency of socioeconomic disparities to increase over time.

The paper attempts to fill some gaps in measuring the level and disparities of welfare in a fast-growing emerging economy. The Romanian regional context is to a lesser extent explored in a multidimensional approach, from spatial and temporal points of view.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight some testing procedures, both in time/frequency framework, useful to test for significant cycles in insurance data. The US underwriting cycle is measured using the growth rates of real premiums.

In addition to the traditional AR(2) model, two new approaches are suggested: testing for a significant peak in the periodogram using Fisher g test and a nonparametric version of it, and testing for unit root cycles in insurance data.

All approaches find empirical evidence for a cyclical behaviour of the growth rates of property‐liability real premiums. Results on the length of dominant cycle still diverge, according to the approach (time/frequency domain).

Compared to the existing literature, the present study innovates in that it highlights additional testing procedures, helpful to detect significant cycles in insurance time series. The underwriting cycle is analysed through the growth rates of real premiums.

This paper examines the relationship between flexicurity and employment inflows in the EU28 countries over the 2007–2019 period. Flexicurity is defined as the mix of flexible contractual arrangements, social security systems, active labor market policies and lifelong learning strategies.

Using two-way fixed effects two-stage least squares, we estimate the employment inflows as a function of an equal-weighted flexicurity composite indicator and other labor market, economic and business environment characteristics. To ensure the robustness of results, in additional specifications, we test the sensitivity of the flexicurity’s coefficient to: (1) the change of instruments; (2) the removal of different non-core variables and (3) the consideration of recessionary periods European regions. In addition, we estimate regressions with separate flexicurity components and with differently constructed flexicurity indices.

In all the estimations, increased flexicurity efforts are positively related to employment inflows. Increased flexicurity efforts benefit Eastern European countries more than the Northern and Anglo-Saxon groups. Not only a synergistic policy action that uses an equal combination of the four pillars of flexicurity has a positive impact on the employment inflow rate. Strategies that give more weight to the formation of skills seem to favor the labor market reinsertion most.

To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study in the flexicurity–employment inflows literature since it: (1) follows all the European Union countries over more than a decade; (2) brings some tentative findings on the socio-cultural moderation of flexicurity’s impact on employment inflows and (3) explores different country-level flexicurity indices.

Examines the twelfth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.