Modelers of students’ entrepreneurial intention during the COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic times: The role of entrepreneurial university environment

This paper examines the shaping factors, drivers, and impact credentials of students’ entrepreneurial intention during the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed framework addresses the antecedents of entrepreneurial intention among students in Romania, focusing on three focal constructs, namely, risk-taking, proactiveness, and innovativeness, with a keen focus on the mediation effect of the entrepreneurial university environment. The study used self-reported data collected through an online questionnaire during November 2020–February 2021 from a sample of 1,411 students in western Romania. The methodology relies on two modern techniques of modeling cross-sectional data, namely, structural equation modeling (SEM) and Gaussian graphical models (GGMs). The main results highlight that the three constructs positively relate to students’ entrepreneurial intention in a comprehensive framework where the entrepreneurial university environment drives innovativeness. The paper brings forward, in an innovative way, that entrepreneurship education and training at the university level enhance students’ entrepreneurial intentions as it fosters the attainment of advanced knowledge and skills. The results are well associated with the start-up process as prerequisites for successful entrepreneurship engagement of youth in a globalized digital economy, particularly during this challenging pandemic outbreak, but also post-pandemic times. This research sheds new light on the essential role played by higher education institutions in providing advanced knowledge and necessary skills matched with the labor market needs, thus enhancing students’ innovativeness and their entrepreneurial intentions.

The Interplay between Public Health, Well-Being and Population Aging in Europe: An Advanced Structural Equation Modelling and Gaussian Network Approach.

Given the COVID-19 pandemic crisis that has deeply affected the health and well-being of people worldwide, the main objective of this paper was to explore the existing relationship between health, welfare, and population aging until the pandemic burst, on the basis of two distinctive groups of European Union (EU) countries, namely, the old and the new member states. The methodological endeavor was based on two advanced econometric techniques, namely, structural equation modelling and network analysis through Gaussian graphical models, applied for each group of EU countries, analyzed during the period of 1995-2017. The main results revealed significant differentiation among the new and old EU countries as follows: public health support was found to have a positive impact on healthy aging and well-being of older people, on other social determinants, and on people's perceived good and very good health; overall, significant influences were revealed in terms of the aging dimensions. The main implications of our findings relate to other researchers as a baseline comparison with the existing situation before the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, but also to policymakers that have to rethink the public health allocations, both in old and new EU member states, in order to endorse the aging credentials, underpinning a successful and healthy integration of the elderly within all life dimensions.

LABOR PRODUCTIVITY IN THE COMPLEX INTERPLAY BETWEEN HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF OLDER EMPLOYEES: A FOCUS ON THE NEW EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES UNDER THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC CRISIS

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has severely impacted the good health and well-being of people around the world. On these unforeseen challenges, decision makers reconfigure advanced resilient policies and strategies for the labor markets, which have already been deeply impacted by the amplitude of the ageing phenomenon (downsized birth rate jointly with an increasing life expectancy). Consequently, the general objective of our research is to assay the labor market productivity of workers in the New European Union (EU) Member States under the complex implications of older employment and ageing dimensions, significantly shaped by health and well-being. The methodological approach consisted in applying the structural equation modelling (SEM) technique on a large dataset covering the 1995-2017 lapse of time. The results obtained revealed the need for older employment (55-64 years) reconfiguration, on the one hand, by: further sustaining the educational programs, new labor market policies (active and passive) and increasing the public allocations for research & development, especially adapted for nowadays digital online working. On the other hand, the weightiness of government expenditures dedicated for improving the health perceptions for sustainable good health and well-being, jointly with better health conditions of older people, will lead to an increased life expectancy, emphasized birth rate and tackled poverty, with cumulative positive effects on the labor market productivity in EU countries.