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Abstract It is well documented that startups struggle to obtain funding. Despite the emergence of online crowdfunding which is a financial tool that allows entrepreneurs to receive funds from a large group of individuals, startups have to gain legitimacy to overcome liability of newness and smallness in pursuit of financial resources. Building on the theory of organizational legitimacy with a focus on four different types of legitimacy, this study creates a unique dataset and investigates the effects of each type of legitimacy on projects’ crowdfunding performance. The findings suggest that various types of legitimacy are critical in crowdfunding efforts to help entrepreneurs obtain higher pledge amounts and stronger crowd support and to reach their initial goal amounts. However, some types of legitimacy are more effective than others in a crowdfunding context. This study not only contributes to the crowdfunding and organizational legitimacy literature but also provides practical strategies for startups to improve their crowdfunding success.Plain English SummaryTrying to use crowdfunding to start a business? Building legitimacy is the key. My new study “Crowdfunding: Different types of legitimacy” explores the strategies necessary to be successful on crowdfunding.With a novel data collection method, this study extends current legitimacy theory to the crowdfunding setting which requires entrepreneurs to gain legitimacy from the public through an accelerated process. Based on the in-depth examination of the effects of different types of legitimacy on crowdfunding performance, this study shows that moral, pragmatic, associational, and consequential legitimacy play significant roles in ventures’ crowdfunding performance.This research makes one of the earliest attempts to investigate legitimacy theory in a broader sense. It is also the first study to connect legitimacy with crowdfunding. Furthermore, the findings provide entrepreneurs with actionable strategies to succeed in crowdfunding.

This article studies how voting for Brexit affected living standards in the United Kingdom. Using heterogeneity in exposure to import costs across product groups, we analyze how the depreciation of sterling caused by the referendum affected consumer prices. We find that the Brexit depreciation led to higher inflation in product groups with greater import shares in consumer expenditure. Our results are consistent with complete pass-through of import costs to consumer prices and imply aggregate exchange rate pass-through of 0.29. We estimate the Brexit depreciation increased consumer prices by 2.9%, costing the average household £870 per year.

This study analyzes meetings of firms with policymakers at the European Commission (EC). Meetings with Commissioners are associated with positive abnormal equity returns for U.S. firms. Firms of the European Union (EU), however, do not experience significant value increases. We identify regulatory outcomes as a channel that can rationalize this difference in value effects of political access. U.S. firms with meetings are more likely to receive favorable decisions in their EC merger decisions than their EU peers. The results suggest that cross-border political access can alleviate uncertainties and alleged discriminatory behavior of regulators in foreign markets.

Purpose: Moldova is a country with strong aspirations to join the European Union (EU), however, as a transition state it still has socio-economic structures resistant to the types of reforms needed to become an EU member. The goal of this article is to explore the Republic of Moldova's EU membership prospects. The purpose is to highlight Moldova's current progress towards EU accession criteria and the challenges and domestic roadblocks that stand in the way. Design/Methodology/Approach: The article develops a novel socio-economic approach and adopts the concept of 'europeanisation' to understand Moldova's evolving alignment with the EU. A qualitative approach is pursued which relies on content analysis of key documents, economic data, civil society reports, and interviews with EU and Moldovan officials carried out in 2022 and 2023. Findings: Findings reveal a positive reform dynamic and strong political will, but at the same time critical shortcomings and weaknesses. By 'digging deep' into the domestic context of Moldova's EU membership aspirations the article identifies three socio- economic structural features resulting from its characteristics as a transition state; a weak social contract, an economy shaped by legacies of the past and political polarisation, all of which have significant consequences for the country's EU accession. Practical Implications: The practical implications of the findings suggest that plans to realise Moldova's EU accession in 2030 are optimistic and the desire for a quick accession process to meet urgent geopolitical imperatives could mean that serious socio- economic structural problems are ignored. Findings also suggest that the EU needs to redouble its efforts to help Moldovans re-build their social contract, tackle the informal economy, and emphasise de-oligarchisation to enhance the country's socio-economic resilience. Originality/Value: The value of the article comes from its timeliness and novel socio-economic approach, as such, the article contributes to filling the current research gap. Keywords: European Union, Moldova, informal economy, EU enlargement, europeanisation, remittances. JEL Classification: P20, P30, F02, F50. Funding: This article is based on findings from a National Science Centre of Poland (NCN) grant 'Domestic Barriers to the Pro-European Transformation of Moldova' No. 2016/23/B/1155/03635.

A thorough investigation of the relationship between the deepening and the widening processes of EU integration and the historic evolution of regional disparities is missing in the related vast existing inductive literature. This usually focuses on EU15 countries or Central and Eastern European Countries, generally involves relatively short and recent periods, and takes into consideration just one institutional change at a time, if any. This article aims at filling these gaps by providing a theoretical interpretative framework on the effects of each institutional change on inter- and intranational disparities, and by verifying the fitness of the theoretical expectations with a longitudinal trend analysis and with an econometric event analysis. Theory was overall right in claiming that widening and deepening of the EU would have exacerbated intraregional disparities. Counteracting such tendency could look like fighting gravity, since disparities continuously reappear in different forms and spatial levels, transmitting a sense of unescapable normality.

According to EU enlargement policy, the main objective of the Stabilization and Association Agreements (SAAs) is not only economic growth and export promotion, but also law enforcement, including various market reforms. In addition to SAAs, the European Union (EU) also supported the Balkans with bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), followed by general trade preferences and multilateral free trade agreements (CEFTA 2006). This paper examines whether SAAs have been able to accelerate export growth, investment and economic development in the Western Balkans. Based on an empirical analysis of panel data, the main findings confirm that SAAs have not been sufficient to increase exports and consequently reduce the trade deficit of the Western Balkan countries. In addition, a special section is dedicated to Kosovo’s management issues, such as firm development, export promotion, the relationship between management characteristics and export performance and other relevant topics, as Kosovo is the last country in the Western Balkan that is still implementing an SAA. Prema politici proširenja Europske unije, glavni cilj Sporazuma o stabilizaciji i pridruživanju (SSP) nije samo gospodarski rast i poticanje izvoza, već i provođenje zakona, uključujući različite tržišne reforme. Uz SSP-ove, Europska unija (EU) podržala je zemlje Balkana i bilateralnim sporazumima o slobodnoj trgovini (FTA), zatim općim trgovinskim povlasticama te multilateralnim sporazumima o slobodnoj trgovini (CEFTA 2006). Ovaj rad ispituje jesu li SSP-ovi uspjeli ubrzati rast izvoza, investicija i gospodarski razvoj na Zapadnom Balkanu. Na temelju empirijske analize panel-podataka, glavni nalazi potvrđuju da SSP-ovi nisu bili dovoljni za povećanje izvoza, a posljedično ni za smanjenje trgovinskog deficita zemalja Zapadnog Balkana. Dodatno, poseban odjeljak posvećen je upravljačkim izazovima Kosova, poput razvoja poduzeća, poticanja izvoza, odnosa između karakteristika menadžmenta i izvozne učinkovitosti te drugim relevantnim temama, s obzirom na to da je Kosovo posljednja zemlja Zapadnog Balkana koja još uvijek provodi SSP.

The paper investigates the effect of legal change on the lending behavior of banks in twelve transition economies. First, we find that banks increase the supply of credit subsequent to legal change. Second, changes in collateral law matter more for increases in bank lending than do changes in bankruptcy law. We attribute this finding to the different functions of collateral and bankruptcy law. While the former enhances the likelihood that individual creditors can realize their claims against a debtor, the latter ensures an orderly process for resolving multiple, and often conflicting, claims after a debtor has become insolvent. Finally, we find that foreign-owned banks respond more strongly to legal change than incumbents.

The latest successive enlargements to Central and Eastern European countries and their differentiated convergence raise the question of the effectiveness of the European structural funds that have been greatly enjoyed by such countries. The literature on this question is nevertheless not unanimous. I therefore offer an analysis of the cohesion policy and its role in regional growth specifically in Central and Eastern Europe, using a method developed in spatial analysis, namely, GWR (geographically weighted regression) at the NUTS 3 level. My findings reveal the existence of a multipolar convergence. The differentiated spatial variations of the influence of European funds on regional economic growth call for reorientation of the cohesion policy, especially in favor of a more territorialized policy.

This paper investigates per capita real income convergence in the European Union (EU) within a non-linear latent factor framework. We establish a set of novel stylized facts on economic convergence between 1970 and 2010 in light of the institutional changes and macroeconomic adjustment processes undertaken over the last 40 years. Our findings suggest no overall income convergence in the EU, however, we identify convergence clubs using an iterative testing procedure. The clubs are formed mainly on the basis of geographic region, and clustering is not necessarily related to EMU membership. The empirical evidence suggests a clear separation between the new and old EU member states in the long run, and we observe a division along the South-East vs. North-West dimension since the 1990s.

In this paper we examine three forms of regret in relation to the UK’s hugely significant referendum on EU membership that was held in June 2016. They are: (i) whether ‘leave’ voters at the referendum subsequently regretted their choice (in the light of the result), (ii) whether non-voters regretted their decisions to abstain (essentially supporting ‘remain’) and (iii) whether individuals were more likely to indicate that it is everyone’s duty to vote following the referendum. We find evidence in favor of all three types of regret. In particular, leave voters and non-voters were significantly more likely to indicate that they would vote to remain given a chance to do so again; moreover, the probability of an individual stating that it was everyone’s duty to vote in a general election increased significantly in 2017 (compared to 2015). The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of the referendum’s outcome.