Issue 3, 2020

The peculiarities of the impact of the global financial crisis on the state and behaviour of European banks in the post-crisis period are revealed. The changes in the structure of the bank balances and how the priorities in their activity change under the influence of the difficult economic environment after the crisis are analysed. In the context of changes in globalisation, the European banks face a number of challenges in relation to the need to introduce financial innovations and the competition between the major international banks and the FinTech companies.
JEL: F15; F36; G2; G28

The “Data Envelopment Analysis” (DEA) non-parametric approach is used to study the impact of mergers and acquisitions in the banking sector in Bulgaria during the 2007-2018 period on the efficiency of banking units. The results of the analysis of the efficiency of the banks that went through this process show that, after the merger of the respective banking units, the acquiring banks manage to increase their scale efficiency and reach a technologically optimal scale of production several years after the merger. In addition, the findings show that most of them manage to reach maximum technical efficiency and are involved in shaping the boundary of efficiency of the entire banking system.
JEL: G34; G21; C14

The increase in inequalities over the last thirty years has been supported by the statements of liberal economic thought. According to liberalists, economic inequality is a necessary condition to achieve the objectives of economic growth and market efficiency. The failure of the Efficient-market hypothesis, with the financial crisis of 2007, brings forth the need to reconsider the theoretical basis of perfect individual rationality, taking into account more realistic models of individuals with limited rationality. This is how the role of conventions in decision making comes into play, and more specifically the chapter twelve of Keynes’ General Theory, through the analysis of anticipations in condition of uncertainty, where the conventional nature of the investment decision is highlighted. But the Keynesian convention is insufficient to better explain how financial markets operate, when the convention is lacking. Thus, the present paper proposes a review of the “Keynesian conventional economy”, updating it in the “oriented conventional economics”.
JEL: B15; B26; D81; D91; E12; E13; I14

The relationship between labor productivity and wages in the EU as a whole, as well as in comparative terms between old and new Member States is analyzed. Although the theoretical basis for such a study well known, some recent empirical studies put forth the need to rethink this relationship in the period after the crisis. In this regard, a result that is new to the Bulgarian literature has been drawn up with the help of modern panel econometric methods, which shows that there is an asymmetry in the relationship between labor productivity and wages before and after the global financial and economic crisis of 2007-2009. In addition, a further explanation of the asymmetry between labor productivity and wages, as found in the literature, is provided.
JEL: E24; J01; J30