Regional Formation and Development Studies

Study programme quality assessment provides higher education quality which in its turn is an essential precondition for the successful national economy development. At the moment the society has a lot of discussion about what is higher education quality and how to assess it. The pragmatic approach makes us set criteria for study programme quality assessment. However, before doing that one must understand what higher education quality is. Developing over the years, higher education has created different quality understandings. The different quality understandings form the necessity of different quality assessment approaches. As the foundation of higher education quality assessment to create the methodological basis there are taken higher education quality assessment conceptions distinguished by R. Barnett: objective, subjective and development. Each of the conceptions intends to use different approaches for higher education assessment. The research approbates the usage of The Analytic Hierarchy process (AHP) method to detect the most significant study programme quality criteria and the most suitable way of assessment for them. AHP method is based on expert surveys, which were taken part by two most important interest groups interested in higher education: higher education administrative staff and students. Higher education administrators are represented by Higher Education Council representative, LU heads of administrative departments and leadership staff who are responsible for study quality and programme accreditation. In their turn, students are represented by members of Latvian Student Association, LU student council representatives and students from different LU faculties.

Maitinimo įstaigų populiarumo Lietuvoje didėjimas pagrindžia vartotojų pasitenkinimo šiomis įstaigomis tyrimo aktualumą. Vertinant itališkos virtuvės atitikimą tradiciniam lietuvio skoniui, tyrimą nuspręsta atlikti picerijų sektoriuje. Tiriant siekta įvertinti vartotojų pasitenkinimą Kauno miesto picerijomis. Tyrimo duomenys leidžia daryti išvadą, kad siekiant didesnio vartotojų pasitenkinimo picerijomis, svarbiausia suderinti vartotojų lūkesčius ir produktų bei aptarnavimo kokybę. Apibendrinus atlikto tyrimo rezultatus, sudarytas vartotojų pasitenkinimo Kauno miesto picerijomis modelis, kuris gali būti taikomas apskaičiuojant vartotojų pasitenkinimą visomis picerijomis arba konkrečia Kauno miesto picerija, taip pat adaptuotas kitų miestų picerijų ar kitų maitinimo įstaigų vartotojų pasitenkinimui matuoti.

Straipsnyje nagrinėjamos jūrų žuvininkystės sektoriaus, kaip regioninio verslo, problemos ir perspektyvos. Įvertinta jūrų žuvininkystės sektoriaus būklė, problemos ir numatytos galimos perspektyvos. Straipsnyje apibendrinta informacija, pateikta žuvininkystės sektoriaus norminiuose aktuose ir dokumentuose, statistinė informacija, moksliniai straipsniai bei informacija iš įvairių seminarų. Pateikta siūlymų galimoms perspektyvoms įgyvendinti.

Risk management is one of the most critical and important areas that affects every insurance company’s activity and development. The goal of the research is to identify and establish the most important parts of risk management with the aim to improve the insurance company’s reliability with the risk self-assessment. Also risk management is one of the most significant functions under Solvency II Directive framework. The methods chosen for conducting the research are: literature exploring, comparative methods, modeling, analysis, methods of expert evaluation.

Straipsnyje nagrinėjama finansų krizių sąvoka, aptariami finansų krizių skirstymo teoriniai aspektai. Nustačius, kad finansų krizių klasifikavimas ir skirstymas pagal panašius požymius leistų jas geriau suprasti ir palengvintų jų poveikio ekonomikai analizę, sudaryta finansų krizių tipų klasifikacinė lentelė. Apibendrinamojoje finansų krizių tipų klasifikacinėje lentelėje pateikiami finansų krizių tipai, nurodomos pagrindinės jų kilimo priežastys, pristatyti pagrindiniai poveikio ekonomikai rodikliai bei išvardyti istoriniai šių finansų krizių tipų pavyzdžiai. Tyrimo metu nustatytos trys Lietuvos ekonomiką neigiamai paveikusios finansų krizės – „Bankų krizė“ (1995), „Rusijos finansų krizė“ (1998) ir „Globali finansų krizė“ (2008), apibrėžtos jų kilimo priežastys. Akcentuojant darnaus ekonominio vystymosi prielaidas Lietuvoje ir siekiant tyrimų pagrindu kurti regioninę politiką, šios finansų krizės suklasifikuotos pagal sudarytą tipologiją.

Innovation is often recognized as a vital source of competitive advantage for business. Taking into account the conditions of increasing globalization at a high level of intensity as well as a rapidly changing technological landscape and also continuous customer demands for new products and services on the modern market, it is needed to assume that businesses have to innovate in order to survive and prosper in the contemporary environment. In the context of the paper at hand the main attention is given to the analysis of the theoretical and empirical aspects of the concept of innovation. There were applied such economic science research methods as monographic, grouping, reference, generalization, graphical analysis and content analysis.

An aging population is defined in the scientific literature as changes in the structural age composition of the population, which leads to growth in the population of those who are 60 years and older. The aging of population is a social and economic problem that needs to be understood and addressed. Aging of the population has a significant impact on national economies, as well as within individual regions of the country. The old age index has a significant impact on regional supply of services. It is worth stressing that in order to improve a community’s quality of life and reduce disparities between regions, it is necessary to continually assess the level of development and regional development opportunities. Evaluation of the regional socio-economic situation should be performed periodically, so that regional policy measures can be directed to the areas of greatest need.

In all states of European Union reforms in pension system are being made, likewise in Latvia. Demographic and economic problems that are occurred forces pension reforms to be made. New developed pension reform includes different processes, like – formation of financial equilibrium between incomes and costs, limit performance in going early in pension, increasing of age of going in pension, rebalancing between men and women. Simultaneous formation of state and private pension systems could prevent some of the major drawback in system of pension that undermines the pension system of nowadays. Unfortunately the high social security contributions of state sector persons lacks of money, for deposit in private pension funds. Using method of logic synthesis, as the target authors nominated to examine problems of pension systems in the Baltic States, as well as similarities and divergences in problems and perspectives, with the status of private pension funds in accumulating pension system.

The article covers the essence and the key role of marketing communications in the market and business of nowadays, the trends of development of marketing communications – the growing popularity of the Internet, changes in the consumers’ communications, the increased importance of direct marketing, as well as the selection of marketing communications based on the stages of product life cycle. Attention is devoted to the types of marketing communications at a particular stage of buyers’ behaviour. The authors availed of the results of their piece of research of 2011 where they used data of companies, polled consumers with the sample totality of 417 respondents, as well as performed an examination.