The scientific articles published in this issue cover various areas of social sciences. In this volume, both theoretical and empirical research articles can be found. I. Borucinska in her article on the economic analysis of the benefits of the EU-Japan partnership agreements deals with the regional problems, while the applicability of the theory of business cycles developed in the Austrian School of Economics are analysed by R. Čiegis and S. Girdžijauskas. Z. Zeibote examines the influence of clusters on regional competitiveness. Also, quite in a different aspect, there are discussed regional problems presented in the article by R. Bučinskaitė where the discrepancies between the EU civil procedures are revealed, meanwhile A. Pahman assesses corruption and forest problems in Indonesia. In contemporary science, there are a number of research investigating the involvement of society or community in decision-making at local level or in education. In this journal, one can also find articles relevant to these topics; such are the articles by R. Jančius, A. Gavenauskas and J. Pekarskas, who study issues of ecological education in society or J. Vorevičienė’s work analysing the activities of community centres in the local communities. In addition, the authors A. Batuchin, R. Saveljeva, G. Viksne and Z. Staneva examine the welfare and future of society by analysing the immigrants’ attitude towards the host country, while the young people’s attitude towards their quality of life in Klaipėda municipality is highlighted by G. Strakšienė. Furthermore, V. Tauraitė presents the effect of fear of losses in neuroeconomics, whereas V. Valiulė and M. Vaikšnoras discuss the role of managers in the empowerment of human resources. Enjoy your reading!