UNASSIGNED: This paper identifies the determinant factors of Portuguese investment in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. We assume that investment abroad is motivated by business opportunities, and the quality-price ratio of the workforce.
UNASSIGNED: To this end, we used a qualitative methodology composed of 6 case studies, based on interviews and surveys with the managers of the Portuguese firms investing in those three economies.
UNASSIGNED: Despite the business opportunities, Portuguese investment directed towards these economies is negligible, due, in part, to the geographic and cultural distance. However, the economic and political stability, combined with market size and growth potential are undeniable attraction factors for Portuguese investors. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), due to their flexible conditions that allow changes in the activity, and the strong trend towards outsourcing, to the detriment of the manufacturing industry, are the primary focus of international investment. This trend, although common to several sectors, has shown greater dynamism in the banking and financial sector.
UNASSIGNED: The results suggest market-oriented investments aiming at growth and expansion. The vast Polish market is the one that most attracted Portuguese investors. The hybrid feature of some strategies can align with the cautious attitude towards the investment translated into cooperation agreements with financial institutions for funding, the market learning process, and the training of the personnel. The anticipation of the installation over potential competitors, the experience in production and international markets, the price-quality ratio, the capacity of product adaptation and the design were considered important sources of competitive advantage that motivated the investment. The greatest difficulties during this process were language and the complexity of legislation.

In recent decades, climate change and environmental pollution have been at the center of global environmental debates. Nowadays, researchers have turned their attention to the linkage between real output and environmental quality and test the environmental Kuznets curve. Majority of the studies focus on a single pollutant aspect and measure the deterioration of the environment through carbon emission (CO2) only. In contrary, the current study uses a comprehensive proxy, ecological footprint, to measure the environmental quality of the sixteen Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs). The aim of this paper is to discover the impact of financial development, economic growth, and energy consumption (renewable and non-renewable) on the environment. In addition, for the first time, the current study includes biocapacity and human capital in the growth-energy-environment nexus in the case of CEECs. In doing so, we used annual data of sixteen CEE countries in perspective of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative and cover the period of 1991-2014. For reliable findings, this study focuses on second-generation econometric approaches to check stationarity, cross-sectional dependency, and co-integration among the model parameters. The long-run estimations of the \"Dynamic Seemingly Unrelated-co-integration Regression\" (DSUR) signify that the effect of economic growth on ecological footprint is not stable and validate N-shaped relationship for cubic functional form between per capita income and ecological footprint (environmental quality). Empirical evidence divulges that financial development and energy use significantly contribute to environmental degradation while renewable energy improves environmental quality by declining ecological footprint significantly. Moreover, the significant effects of biocapacity and human capital are positive and negative on the ecological footprint, respectively. In robustness check through the \"Feasible Generalized Least Square\" (FGLS) and \"Generalized Method of Moment\" (GMM) models, we found consistent result. Lastly, the \"Dumitrescu-Hurlin (D-H) Panel Causality Test\" demonstrates that two-way causal relationship exists between EF and GDP, EF and FD, EF and EU, EF and BC, and EF and HC, while one-way causality is running from RE to EF. This study puts the present scenario of CEE economies in front of the policymakers and suggests that they should consider the vital role of renewable energy and human capital to get sustainability.

This study aims to investigate the impact of different dimensions of globalization (i.e., overall globalization index, economic globalization index, social globalization index, and political globalization index) on environmental pollution by incorporating the real gross domestic product and energy consumption in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs). In doing so, the annual period from 1995 to 2015 is examined with second-generation panel data methodologies to consider the possible cross-sectional dependence among observed countries. The findings show that increasing overall globalization, economic globalization, and social globalization increases the carbon emissions while increasing political globalization reduces the environmental pollution. In addition, it is also found that Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis is confirmed.