Issue 6, 2021

Although announced and/or expected by some experts in the field, the Covid appeared in November 2019 in China and was declared as a “pandemic” in March 2020 by the World Health Organization. It surprised the whole world by its scale, its speed of propagation, its insolence, its statelessness, its disrespect for the development levels of countries, and above all its cruelty. It has plunged the world into a state of lethargy and hibernation rarely seen in contemporary times and has forced life to retreat from its usual spaces of deployment.
In such a disjointed context of terror, and if one agrees with Robbins (1932, p. 15) that “Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses”, it may be useful to wonder about the force of laws, rules and other theorems set forth by such a science in the face of a pandemic whose severity index is only equal to that of influenza of 1918-1921. To do this, we use an analytical methodology in the sense that by briefly taking up the ideas of the first six of the twelve seminal thinkers identified by Yueh (2019) (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, Irving Fisher, John Maynard Keynes), we attempt to discuss the resistance of their ideas (or the permanence of the relevance of their results) in the light of the pandemic. The result indicates that not all ideas are invariable.
JEL: B12; B13; B14; O10; P16

Public-private partnership (PPP) in school education in Bulgaria is an unknown but possible practice that can meet the main challenges in both education management and its implementation and impact. Arguments for its adequacy and value can be found in good international practices, in the experience gained, in the implementation of PPP in social services since 2004 and in the existence of relevant legislation. The article aims to develop and present the possibilities of using PPP in school education in Bulgaria. It analyzes good foreign practices, outlines the possibilities and limitations of PPP, and proposes a procedure for implementing PPP in school education. The conclusions of the study are that PPP will create a competitive environment in educational services, increase the quality of education and motivation to learn, and will introduce innovations and mechanisms to monitor and control.
JEL: L32; L33; L38

The article examines the changes in labor resulting from the digitalization of the workplace with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The appearance of new forms of work, the replacement of labor by machines and changes in the qualities and training of the workforce are highlighted. The overcoming of the social contradictions that accompany these changes is associated with the implementation of new instruments such as a global profit tax on large corporations and robotic systems, the elimination of offshore zones, new forms of regulation of new forms of work, unconditional basic income, reduction of working hours, changes in education systems, new forms of control over labor migration, etc. The conclusion is made that the changes occurring in labor lead to new processes and phenomena in the economy, which are an important challenge for economic sciences and especially for political economy to make observations and identify new trends and dependencies. At the same time, the new processes and phenomena require the creation and implementation of new tools for overcoming the negative consequences and adversе impacts on man and society.
JEL: H12; I15; O15; P46; P16

In Marketing, the study of consumer attitudes as psychological variables, primarily related to the purchasing behaviours, is of main importance for predicting and influencing consumers’ behaviours. The purpose of the study is to summarize the formation and impact of consumer attitudes on purchasing decisions, including the internal and external factors that influence attitudes in some of the classic behavioural models. The analysis is focused on the attitudes considered in these models, based on which their main characteristics are derived and presented in tabular form. The suggested findings contribute to a fuller explanation of the role of attitudes in consumers’ behaviour and their importance in purchasing decisions, respectively.
JEL: D9; D11; D12; D91

Frank Knight (1885⎯1972) was an exceptional social scientist and a prolific writer of many reviews and comments on topics in economic theory, philosophy, and ethics. In economics he is best known for his work on uncertainty as a cause for entrepreneurial profit in competitive markets. This is only one of his many contributions that put the market and the price mechanism at center stage. In contrast to many other neoclassical writers, he vehemently criticized the market as a guiding principle to form a society since the market is unethical. Knight considered the economy as a social system and the economic approach as one among many others in social sciences. Knight is a founding father of the Chicago School of Economics. Several of his students became Nobelists.
JEL: B21; B25; B31; B53; D41