Tetiana Vasylieva
57202816090
Publications - 11
Toward tailored AML/CFT strategies: Clustering countries by FATF compliance and effectiveness
Publication Name: Journal of International Studies
Publication Date: 2025-01-01
Volume: 18
Issue: 2
Page Range: 229-254
Description:
Addressing global disparities in Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing (AML/CFT) compliance and effectiveness is increasingly critical due to escalating financial crime risks. This study aims to identify natural clusters of countries based on their performance in FATF technical compliance and effectiveness assessments, thereby facilitating tailored AML/CFT support strategies. The study utilised hierarchical clustering, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and ANOVA tests, employing FATF assessment ratings data for Immediate Outcomes (IO1-IO11) and Recommendations (R.1-R.40). Four distinct clusters were identified, highlighting significant variations in AML/CFT compliance and effectiveness. Advanced economies demonstrated high compliance and effectiveness, emphasising the strategic use of technology, cybersecurity, and effective regulatory oversight. Developing and transitional countries exhibited mixed or low performance, reflecting institutional, socio-economic, and governance-related challenges, including weaker institutional frameworks, higher corruption rates, and socio-economic pressures driving financial crime. The research also underscores persistent global challenges in adapting to new technologies and adequately supervising non-financial sectors. These clusters underline the necessity of differentiated, context-specific AML/CFT strategies, emphasising targeted interventions, technology integration, ethical frameworks, and regional cooperation to enhance global financial integrity. Additionally, these findings differ from the FATF’s traditional grouping approach, which typically classifies countries primarily based on risk assessments and geopolitical factors rather than performance-based data analysis.
Open Access: Yes
Environmental tax reform efficiency: Prerequisites and consequences
Publication Name: Journal of International Studies
Publication Date: 2024-01-01
Volume: 17
Issue: 4
Page Range: 90-108
Description:
Ensuring green transformations of the national economy requires the careful development of effective mechanisms for influencing the behaviour of key stakeholders who impact the environment. Implementing environmental tax reforms (ETR) to balance environmental and economic effects was successful for many European countries. Adapting this experience for developing countries requires considering the impact of national specifics on the expected result. In the first stage, the key consequences of the ETR implementation were assessed using the Differences-in-Differences method. In the second stage, the impact of economic, social, technological and institutional factors on the result of the ETR implementation was tested using panel regression modelling. The calculations showed that the positive effect of increasing the security of the national economy due to the ETR implementation occurs with a relatively long time lag. This indicates that ETR should be considered a strategic instrument for regulating the national economy and developed for the long term, supported by tactical operational tools. At the same time, the most significant manifestations of ETR are observed in the context of their impact on business activity and foreign trade. The key prerequisites for ensuring the ETR's effectiveness are the role of the fiscal and budgetary system, the welfare and gender equality of society, the spread of digital technologies among the population and the rule of law.
Open Access: Yes
DETERMINANTS FOR POST-PANDEMIC RECOVERY OF MACROECONOMIC STABILITY: EVIDENCE FROM EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
Publication Name: Economics and Sociology
Publication Date: 2024-01-01
Volume: 17
Issue: 2
Page Range: 256-272
Description:
The destructive consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have negatively affected socioeconomic indicators and disrupted macroeconomic stability. The aim of the study is to determine the optimal combination of financial, socioeconomic, and public health determinants based on their relevance for the post-pandemic recovery of macroeconomic stability. For this purpose, principal component analysis was used to form an initial macroeconomic stability index by integrating such indicators as GDP growth, unemployment rate, consumer price index, current account balance, and trade volume. Next, the Granger test and panel data regression modeling was employed to identify the causality between the level of macroeconomic stability and a set of financial, socioeconomic and public health determinants. Finally, the financial, socioeconomic, and public health determinants were ranked according to their impact on macroeconomic stability. The obtained empirical results can be used to improve the financial, economic, and health care state policies in terms of strengthening country resistance to risks caused by a pandemic or other similar threats in the future.
Open Access: Yes
Illicit practices: Experience of developed countries
Publication Name: Journal of International Studies
Publication Date: 2024-01-01
Volume: 17
Issue: 2
Page Range: 146-177
Description:
The article is devoted to finding the answer to two research questions. What illegal practices are most significant for clusters of developed countries formed by similarities in trends in corruption, shadow economy, money laundering, and crime rates? What social, economic, regulatory, and digital factors most influence them in each group? The pair correlation coefficients for illicit practices indicators confirm the presence of tight and statistically significant relationships in their trends for 36 developed countries. The agglomerative clustering and canonical analysis results identified that tackling the shadow economy is crucial for Estonia, Slovenia, and Lithuania; corruption for Portugal, Hungary, Cyprus, etc.; the shadow sector and crime levels for Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and New Zealand; corruption, money laundering, and crime for Canada, Germany, the USA, etc.; four illegal practices for Italy, Greece, Turkey, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Romania. The canonical analysis revealed that social and regulatory factors influence the trends of illicit practices in developed countries more than economic and digital ones. Network analysis showed their single moderate influence in most cases. Edge evidence probability analysis confirmed a high probability of a relationship between some pairs of social, economic, regulatory, digital and illegal indicators. However, Bayesian network analysis showed a low likelihood of mutual influence of single factors, confirming the importance of the group influence.
Open Access: Yes
Transparency and trust in the public sector: Target and benchmarks to ensure macroeconomic stability
Publication Name: Journal of International Studies
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Volume: 16
Issue: 4
Page Range: 117-135
Description:
The article is devoted to the study of the relationship between a country's macroeconomic stability and the level of transparency and public trust in the financial sector and public authorities. Canonical analysis and structural modeling served as methodological tools of the research. The study examined the data from eight EU countries (Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Italy) over the 2011-2021period. Eight indicators of public sector transparency and one indicator of the degree of public trust (Consumer Sentiment Index) were chosen to establish the relationship between the components. The results of structural modeling proved that public trust has a much greater impact on macroeconomic stability than indicators of public sector transparency. A 1-point increase in public trust leads the GDP to increase by 0.018% and the stability of the currency exchange rate – by 0.352%. Meanwhile the same effect from a 1-point increase in the level of public sector transparency amounts to 0.061% and 0.021% increases, respectively.
Open Access: Yes
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF QUALITY OF LIFE: CASE OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES
Publication Name: Economics and Sociology
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Volume: 16
Issue: 4
Page Range: 289-308
Description:
The article is devoted to the study of economic and social drivers of quality of life. The method of weighted sums and the Fishburn formula were employed to assess the level of quality of life. Using Ward's method and the Kalinsky-Kharabash test, three clusters of countries were identified. The relationship between indicators was modeled with the Johansen, Dickey-Fuller and Phillips-Perron tests. Five indicators of social development (children out of school, unemployment, literacy rate, hospital beds, total population) and six indicators of economic development (GDP, minimum wage, government expenditure on education, current health expenditure, state expenditure on physical culture and sports industry) were chosen to establish the relationship between the indicators. The research was focused on the data of 30 European countries. Two hypotheses were proposed and tested in the study. Hypothesis H1 was that public spending on education, health care, and sports stimulates an increase in the quality of life. This hypothesis was confirmed for all countries. Hypothesis H2 assumed that the number of children out of school, the level of unemployment, and illiteracy negatively affect the quality of life. This hypothesis was confirmed only for a small number of countries.
Open Access: Yes
Business – education collaboration in R&D investment: Analysis of development gaps and critical points using MAR-splines
Publication Name: Journal of International Studies
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Volume: 16
Issue: 2
Page Range: 57-71
Description:
The purpose of the article is to determine development gaps and critical points in the system of business – education collaboration in R&D investment using MAR-splines. The study attempts to confirm hypotheses about the impact of business – education collaboration in R&D investment on the sustainable development, and, in turn, the influence of chosen factors on the level of cooperation of business and education in R&D investment taking into account development gaps and critical points. These factors include the values of gross domestic expenditure on R&D spent by the business enterprise sector and by the higher education sector, and the level of the informal economy. The study is based on the sample of the 10 countries leading the ranking of Sustainable Development Index for 2011-2018 (time limits are set due to the availability of all studied indicators in the statistical databases of the World Bank, UNDESA, OECD and WIPO). Critical points and knots are determined using MAR-splines and two-way median-spline plots in STATA software. It has been proven that the business – education collaboration in R&D investment contributes to increasing the level of sustainable development if the value of this indicator is in the range of critical points from 62.04 to 68.96 (1% growth increases the estimate of sustainable development by 0.7%). In turn, development gaps and critical points have also been found for factors influencing the level of business-education R&D collaboration.
Open Access: Yes
SOCIO-ECONOMIC PROFILES OF COUNTRIES-CYBERCRIME VICTIMS
Publication Name: Economics and Sociology
Publication Date: 2023-01-01
Volume: 16
Issue: 2
Page Range: 167-194
Description:
The article analyses socio-economic profiles of countries that are victims of cybercrimes due to attacks by malicious programs and viruses spread through email applications, vulnerabilities of information systems and computer networks. The study is based on two hypotheses. The first is that powerful countries with significant global influence are both the cybercrime initiators and cybercrime victims to a greater extent than those with weak leverage. The second hypothesis is based on the fact that the level of socio-economic development of countries can be an indirect motivation for cyber criminals to commit mass cyberattacks. The proposed hypotheses were proved using cluster analysis based on the k-means and silhouette methods for the data from 93 countries. It formed 12 groups of countries based on the cyberattack volume on email applications and networks. Using the Farrar-Glauber test, the research revealed that identified vulnerabilities in information systems highly correlated with other factors. Thus, this factor was eliminated from the data set. An associative analysis was used to form a profile of the victim countries. It identified common socio-economic characteristics for each group and developed the rules of cause-and-effect relationships for them. The cluster analysis results confirm the first hypothesis that the most powerful countries, such as the USA, China, Germany, France, and others, are both victims of cyberattacks and their initiators. The analysis of profiles of countries’ clusters based on the associative rules fully confirmed the second hypothesis.
Open Access: Yes
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND INCOME INEQUALITY: ROLE IN COUNTRY RESISTANCE TO COVID-19
Publication Name: Economics and Sociology
Publication Date: 2022-01-01
Volume: 15
Issue: 4
Page Range: 286-302
Description:
The pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) significantly slowed economic development and exacerbated income inequality. However, the scale of this destructive influence varies considerably among countries. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify changes in causality patterns between economic development and income inequality due to COVID-19. To fulfill the task, an Index of Economic Development (IED) is developed using the multivariate analysis tools, Cronbach's alpha and the Fishburn formula. The Gini index was chosen as a core proxy of social inequality. The research covers a sample of 15 European countries. The period of the analysis is 2000-2021. A set of regression equations are constructed to determine the relationship between economic development and income inequality in the studied countries. A dummy variable is integrated into the equation to determine the impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Modeling is carried out on the panel data. The most acceptable functional form of the regression model is clarified based on the Hausman test. Modeling results make it possible to identify patterns of changes in the impact of income inequality on economic development, and vice versa. The change in their causality due to COVID-19 is substantiated.
Open Access: Yes
Dynamic inflation responses to war-related electricity shocks: DTW-based evidence from European energy and renewables regimes
Publication Name: Journal of International Studies
Publication Date: 2025-01-01
Volume: 18
Issue: 4
Page Range: 180-203
Description:
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine turned wholesale electricity prices into a major, but uneven, driver of inflation across Europe. The article aims to quantify dynamic inflation responses to war-related electricity shocks and to identify distinct energy-inflation regimes conditioned by renewables penetration and structural characteristics. The analysis uses a balanced monthly panel of 26 European countries (2019-2025), combining two-way fixed-effects regressions with event-time “excess” inflation profiles and correlation-and clustering based on Dynamic Time Warping. Early-phase excess inflation around February 2022 ranges from about 0.53 percentage points (cluster 6) to 1.06 percentage points (cluster 3), with clusters 1 and 5 also showing strong overshoots (≈0.94-0.91), while only clusters 1 and 3 sustain elevated excess inflation in the medium phase (≈0.71-0.76) and all regimes converge to within-0.07 to +0.16 by the late phase. DTW clustering reveals six regimes with distinct pre-war configurations of electricity prices (approximately 49-59 EUR/MWh), renewable energy shares (approximately 24-55%), and unemployment rates (approximately 4.45-8.59%). A heterogeneous-slope FE model shows that a 100 EUR/MWh electricity shock raises the monthly HICP by only 0.03 percentage points in cluster 3 and 0.09 in cluster 5. In contrast, the effects in other clusters are small and statistically insignificant, confirming a highly uneven and often muted pass-through.
Open Access: Yes
ELECTRICITY PRICE SHOCKS, RENEWABLE ENERGY PENETRATION, AND MACROECONOMIC STABILITY IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES: EVIDENCE FROM THE 2022 ENERGY CRISIS
Publication Name: Economics and Sociology
Publication Date: 2026-01-01
Volume: 19
Issue: 1
Page Range: 250-275
Description:
The 2022 European energy crisis exposed the macroeconomic vulnerability of EU economies to electricity price shocks and raised urgent questions about the stabilising role of renewable energy penetration. This study examines in how far changes in electricity price components affect macroeconomic stability in Europe and whether renewable energy penetration has buffered these effects during the crisis period. Using a balanced panel of 29 European countries over 2019–2024, the analysis estimates the impact of log changes in electricity prices on a composite Macroeconomic Stability Index (MSI) using two-way fixed-effects models with crisis-year heterogeneous slopes, interaction terms, and two-way clustered standard errors. The results show that increases in non-household electricity prices are associated with statistically significant declines in macroeconomic stability, particularly in 2023 (β = −0.084, p < 0.01) and 2024 (β = −0.333, p < 0.05). A 10% rise in business electricity prices reduced the MSI by approximately 0.009–0.010 points in 2023 (around 4% of one standard deviation) and by about 0.029 points in 2024 (around 13% of one standard deviation). In 2022, the adverse effect was significant in low-renewables countries (ME = −0.056) but statistically insignificant in high-renewables countries, indicating short-run buffering. Joint tests confirm that crisis-period slope shifts (χ² = 30.576, p < 0.001) and renewable moderation effects (χ² = 8.603, p = 0.035) are statistically significant.
Open Access: Yes
