...groups for 10-19 year olds to get instruction in robotics, programming and mobile app and web design. There is no corporate tax on re-invested profits which is promoting long term investment. Their corporate tax rate has been falling continuously since 2004 when it was at 26%. It’s now at 21% but will be dropped to 20% in 2015. In terms of large scale manufacturing and distribution, the country has quick access to the Baltic Sea ports and has its own. With regard to energy security a forcible decrease in the oil shale share of the country's energy output is planned with a new nuclear power plant approved by the government to be built by 2023. With such a high emphasis on education in technology and programming, the future looks bright for Estonia if they can retain their young people, and reverse the declining trend in...
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...Knowledge and skills for innovative entrepreneurship. 8 2.3.5 Enhancing administrative capacity. 8 2.3.6 Technical assistance 8 3 Success stories 8 3.1 Example 1: Start-up Programme 8 3.1.1 Start-up 9 3.1.2 Evolution 9 3.1.3 Most relevant 3 projects 9 3.1.4 Results 9 3.2 Example 2: BioFix 10 3.2.1 Context 10 3.2.2 BioFix Project 10 3.2.3 First steps 10 3.2.4 Partners 10 3.2.5 Results 11 Introduction After centuries of Danish, Swedish, German, and Russian rule, Estonia attained independence in 1918. Forcibly incorporated into the USSR in 1940 - an action never recognized by the US - it regained its freedom in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since the last Russian troops left in 1994, Estonia has been free to promote economic and political ties with the West. It joined both NATO and the EU in the spring of 2004, formally joined the OECD in late 2010, and adopted the euro as its official currency on 1 January 2011. Republic of Estonia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the...
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...Explaining and tackling the shadow economy in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania: a tax morale approach Colin C. Williams & Ioana A. Horodnic To cite this article: Colin C. Williams & Ioana A. Horodnic (2015) Explaining and tackling the shadow economy in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania: a tax morale approach, Baltic Journal of Economics, 15:2, 81-98, DOI: 10.1080/1406099X.2015.1114714 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1406099X.2015.1114714 © 2015 The author(s). Published by Routledge Published online: 12 Nov 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1004 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rbec20 Download by: [95.158.49.18] Date: 20 April 2016, At: 09:43 Baltic Journal of Economics, 2015 Vol. 15, No. 2, 81–98, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1406099X.2015.1114714 Explaining and tackling the shadow economy in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania: a tax morale approach Colin C. Williamsa* a and Ioana A. Horodnicb Management School, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK; bFaculty of Economics and Business Administration, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Iași, Romania Downloaded by [95.158.49.18] at 09:43 20 April 2016 (Received 26 November 2014; accepted 28 October 2015) To explain the shadow economy in the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, this paper evaluates the...
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...– Yes or No For now we have been member of the EU about 11 years. During that time have come out good sides and some bad sides of this membership. For small country like Estonia is quite important to belong into some union. Mostly because of our safety. Our neighbor is not very kind one – Russia. And for that we are member in NATO. I think that belonging into EU is best option for us in economic terms. We are too small to be completely independent and free. We do not have special mineral resource like Norway or specific service like Switzerland has its bank services. To them these values give freedom to be independent. For my opinion till now we have got more from EU than we have to have to pay. Our agriculture is much better shape at the moment than it would be if we are not in EU. Estonia has got agricultural support a lot and it has improved our agricultural life a lot. I have seen several village centers build up with help of PRIAs support money. Thanks to that village people has places to gather together. The other big thing is that our borders in EU are open now. It promotes easier travelling which improves our tourism. And as well – it helps to go to work to our member country. As well known – in Finland work about 60 thousand Estonians. It is quite big amount. And not very good to Estonia – our country life is not so active anymore because there is no work and because of that younger people goes to cities or foreign countries. Prices increase as well. And much...
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...Estonia Banks Targeted University of Maryland University College CSEC 620 Individual assignment # 2 Table of Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 3 Estonia under attack……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4 Types of attacks ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 5 Threats actors and their motives ……………………………………………………………………………. 6 Who were responsible for the attacks ……………………………………………………………………. 7 Strategic Shifts in Response to attacks ……………………………………………………………………. 8 Conclusions ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 10 Introduction The Baltic state of Estonia was attacked by hackers in April of 2007. Scores of government and private sector website were shut down. Estonian’s daily activities, such as pumping gas or making withdrawals from ATM machines were severely impacted. The architecture of the Internet allowed networks of bots, called botnets, to direct millions of packets to the servers of the Estonian targets, overloading and rendering them inaccessible to visitors. Digital traffic from servers ranging all the way to Peru, Vietnam and the United States overwhelmed Estonian websites, overloading their buffers with superfluous data. At the apex of this DDoS flooding, government websites that had been receiving 1,000 visits each day were suddenly inundated with 2,000 per second (Crouch, Pg 1). No overt financial motivations were discovered as the driver of these attacks, with the principal motivation being political...
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...Case Study 5 Economic Turmoil in Latvia September 11, 2014 General Description and Central Issue of the Case The Republic Latvia is a country of 24,938 square miles on the Baltic Sea, with 310 miles of shoreline. The country shares borders with Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, and Russia. Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus are three Baltic States that gained independence after the fall of the Soviet Union (Hill, 2013). Latvia declared independence on May 4, 1990. The population of Latvia is 2,165,165 with an ethnic makeup of Latvian 61.1%, Russian 26.2%, Belarusian 3.5%, Ukrainian 2.3%, Polish 2.2%, Lithuanian 1.3%, other 3.4% (CIA, 2014). Natural resources include peat, limestone, dolomite, amber, hydropower, timber, and arable land. Latvia is often too wet and in need of constant drainage. Approximately 3,953,686 acres of farmland or 85% of Latvia has been improved by drainage for agriculture. Latvia’s primary agricultural products are grain, rapeseed, potatoes, vegetable, pork, poultry, milk, eggs, and fish. Industry includes processed foods, processed wood products, textiles, processed metals, pharmaceuticals, railroad cars, synthetic fibers, and electronics (CIA, 2014). The labor force sector that makes up Latvia’s GDP composition is 4.9% agriculture, 25.7% industry, and 69.4% services. Taxes make up 35.9% of Latvia’s GDP, with a public debt of 39.2%. The unemployment rate is 9.8%, and the industrial growth rate is 4.2%. Latvia has 10.9 billion in revenue...
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...as the district headquarters for the prince-bishops of Ösel-Wiek. The church was founded in 1893 (although 1870 has also been quoted), in a typically rustic building. Today it falls under the reign of Bishop Alexander Hopjorski of Pärnu and Saaremaa. According to one local, it has a congregation of five. Surrounding it is a dry-stone wall reminiscent of the type seen in Yorkshire in England. The Apostolic Church of St Olga (Püha Olga kirik) stands at the west of Kuressaare mnt as it heads northwards into the heart of the village of Leisi. The church was constructed in 1873, using limestone in its walls and forming a cross-shaped building, with a large central onion dome and four corner towers. The Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church in Estonia was restored in 1993, after surviving in exile during the years of Soviet occupation. St Catherine's Church (Katariina kirik) is in the centre of the island of Muhu, immediately north of Saaremaa. The towerless church was first mentioned in 1267. Its west door partly survives from 1617. It was damaged by fire in 1941, during the Second World War, and stood roofless until 1958, although the original vaults, over the church rather than under it,...
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...The Baltic Sea is surrounded by nine countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Covering 103,000 square kilometers (40,000 square miles), it receives runoff from a massive area covering about 1.6 million square kilometers (630,000 square miles) and containing more than 70 million people. Approximately 15% of the world's industrial production occurs in the sea's basin. The Baltic Sea was a relatively clean body of water before the mid-1960s. Today it is one of the most polluted surface waters in the world. A wide assortment of pollutants sully its waters. They come from factories, sewage treatment plants, agriculture, forestry, and shipping. The Baltic Sea is extremely vulnerable to pollution for other reasons as well. First, its waters tend to stratify Freshwater flowing into the sea from its many tributaries mixes incompletely with the saltwater, forming an upper layer with a slightly lower salt content. The saltier bottom layer is heavier. This stratification tends to reduce exchange between the layers, which results in extremely low oxygen levels in deeper waters. Any factors such as pollution that lower oxygen levels further can have a devastating effect on bottom-dwelling and deep-water sea life. Second, the Baltic's connection with the North Sea is a narrow channel, so it takes about 50 years for the Baltic...
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... 2060 August 7, 2007 The Estonian Economic Miracle The Honorable Mart Laar Estonia is a small country in Northern Europe on the Baltic Sea, at the crossroads of East and West, South and North. Samuel Huntington states that the Estonian border is a border of Western civilization, a border where civilizations clash.1 This has made Estonia interesting to historians but hard for people who live there. Throughout history, Estonians have had to fight for their freedom. In 1918, Estonia declared independence. It was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 during the Second World War. We fought the communist terror during the war but were defeated. As a result of the occupation, Estonia lost nearly 20 percent of its population. But we never gave up. When the 1980s offered us a new chance, we took advantage of it. Estonia became one of the first countries to pry open the cracks in the Soviet Empire. Finally, in 1991, after 50 years of occupation, Estonia became free again. We had freedom but little else. Estonia was destroyed during the period of communist rule. In 1939, Estonia’s living standards and way of life were more or less the same as neighboring Finland’s. Then Estonia lost its independence, but Finland, despite losing territory and population, succeeded in keeping its independence. Life under two different political systems created a huge disparity in the development of Finland and Estonia. People learned and worked hard on both sides of the Finnish Bay, but only the Finns...
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...ORGANISATIONS IN EUROPE EUROPEAN COMMISSION Directorate-General for Education and Culture Directorate C: Lifelong learning: higher education and international affairs European Institute of Innovation and Technology; economic partnership Public open tender EAC/37/2009: CONTENTS CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Scope of report Introduction to UBC Elements in the UBC Ecosystem 5 5 5 5 AIMS & METHODOLOGY Introduction Objective Process for selection Basis for selection Countries considered in the selection of the cases Case study partners 7 7 7 7 8 8 9 CASE STUDIES Case study key insights Classification of countries Nature of case study Case study quick-find 10 10 12 12 13 NORTHERN Europe Case 1: SEA, Denmark Case 2: ETM, Estonia Case 3: Demola, Finland Case 4: REAP, Ireland Case 5: Mobility at UL, Latvia Case 6: CSE, Sweden Case 7: SMIL, Sweden Case 8: SPEED, UK Case 9: IDI/Digital City, UK Case 10: Acua Limited, UK 18 19 25 30 35 41 46 52 57 63 70 76 80 84 90 96 EASTERN EUROPE Case 11: GIS, Bulgaria Case 12: TTO Pécs, Hungary Case 13: The Science and Economy Project, Poland Case 14: WCTT, Poland Case 15: Q-PlanNet, Romania 75 1 © Science-to-Business Marketing Research Centre CONTENTS SOUTHERN EUROPE Case 16: MUHC, Malta Case 17: PNICube, Italy Case 18: TTO Milano, Italy Case 19: InnoCash, Spain Case 20: INNOVA, Spain Case 21: INNPACTO, Spain 102 103 108 113 117 122 127 133 140 145 150 155 160 167 173 178 WESTERN EUROPE Case...
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...overheating of economies of the Baltic states1. When the global financial crisis or “the four horsemen of financial crises: “sudden stops” in capital inflows, asset price collapses, recessions and fiscal deficits”2 hit, the Baltic states were no exception. There are different views about the exit strategy from the financial crisis of the Baltic states. Defenders point to recent rapid growth. One can look at the GDP annual growth rates for years 2006-2014 for the Baltic states - the GDP decreased rapidly during crisis, reaching its lowest point in 2009 for all three Baltic states. After 2009 the GDP annual growth rates increased, howerver, at the end of 2012, GDP of, e.g., Latvia was still below its pre-crisis level; Lithuania and Estonia had done better. Taking a look also at the GNI annual growth rates for years 2006-2014 for the Baltic states, the decrease in the GNI rate, e.g., for Latvia continued until 20103, showing that even though the value of goods and services produced in the country increased, less of it than suggested by the GDP actually stayed in the country.4 Nevertheless, the Baltic states were able to combine a huge external adjustment with restoration of growth.5 Along with other means to overcome the unexperienced impact of the global financial crisis, all three Baltic states chose to decrease public spending and implement a wide range of structural reforms instead of...
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...Baltic Energy Forum for Students 2012 Cooperation of the Baltic companies to get along with regulations of the EU [Sélectionnez la date] Prepared by Vytautas Magnus University students: Povilas Brilius Žygintas Dovydėnas Karolina Mališauskaitė Table of contents Introduction 3 Key aspects of the Baltic States’ energy companies 3 Common situation 5 Context of the European Union 7 Conclusions and recommendations 8 References 9 Introduction Recent events in global and local spheres are important to Baltic States’ energy economics. Among those are a) late collaboration initiatives between Baltic States’ governments to endorse regional projects in order to get connected into the EU energy network b) new EU regulatory frameworks, in particular applying to Baltic States energy markets situation c) the declining EU position in terms of energy sector competitiveness. These facts require deeper and more thorough investigation into Baltic energy market players and their abilities to meet demands of changing environment. Authors of this short paper seek to...
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...1. A. What country ran the area after WWII? A: Russia occupied most of the countries in Eastern Europe after WWII. B. How do you think the two world wars affected the people of Poland? I think the two world wars affected Poland’s economy because of the war damage, and it lost many of its citizens. 2. A. How do the languages spoken in Poland and the Balkan republics affect the region’s history? The languages spoken there reflect on who ruled the country the most in the past. Polish is related to the languages of countries in the south, and Estonian is similar to Finnish. Latvia and Estonia, on the other hand, were under Swedish rule for a long time and because the Swedish are mostly Lutheran, most people in Latvia and Estonia are Lutheran as well. B. Why do you think people across the region practice many of the same customs? People across this region practice the same customs because they all are linked together from being under Soviet rule for so many years. 3. A. What is an industry that has grown in the region since the fall of the Soviet Union? One industry that has grown since the fall of the Soviet Union is tourism. The Americans have started visiting the countries that used to be under Soviet rule because they did not like to go there when it was under Soviet rule, because the Americans didn’t like the Soviets. B. How did Soviet rule hurt the region’s economy? Soviet rule hurt the region’s economy because the Soviets did not create a decent infrastructure...
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...are reviewed, each event is different from the other only in terms of the consequences, only the consequences were different. What is “Cyber-Warfare”? One definition of cyber-warfare is, “cyberattacks are so inexpensive and easy to mount, with few fingerprints, they will almost certainly remain a feature of modern warfare.” (Markoff, 2008). Digital battles waged within the digital world of computer systems and the world-wide-web (internet). Cheap, “It costs about 4 cents per machine,” (Markoff, 2008), so cheap that the cost of one armored tank tread (one piece of the entire treack) could finance an entire cyber-war (Markoff, 2008). The first cyber-warfare event, Estonia 2007: Following the fall/collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1990 formerly USSR controlled nation states returned to autonomous control; Estonia was one of these countries. Being released from Soviet control did not mean that the civilian population wanted to be free from the Russian government and tensions existed between pro-Estonian and pro-Russian citizens; it was these tensions that would inflame and erupt into nationwide civil unrest. The Estonian government tore down a revered military tribute statue that represent communist unknown Soldiers of that region. When anti-Estonian civilians became aware of the statues destruction rioting erupted. But a new form of civil unrest was also unleashed and that was Cyber-Warfare. Now...
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...Online Voting: Good or Bad? E-voting does exist in various forms throughout the world — from electronic vote-counting of paper ballots, to actual, digital-display ballot machines — but bona fide, entirely-digital systems are incredibly rare. A handful of countries have experimented with remote, internet-based voting for expatriates and armed forces, but the only country to ever hold a fully-digital election — where anyone in the country could vote via the internet — is Estonia, which started in 2007. In 2011, 15% of Estonia’s population voted via the internet. Why is internet voting so slow to take off? Security is one aspect — after 100 years of refining the paper-and-pen approach, it’s understandable that some states would be apprehensive about switching to that terrifying, publicly-owned entity that is the internet — but as Estonia has shown, with ID cards that also act as public key encryption smart cards, it’s possible to create a secure internet voting platform. There are also valid concerns about hardware and software tampering — a man-in-the-middle attack somewhere between the voting terminal (be it at home or at a polling station) and the end point where tabulation occurs — but these can be ameliorated by instigating a chain of custody and public, open inspection of the systems used. In short, it’s not like the US lack the ability or technology to run a secure, internet-based election. Just imagine what would happen if suddenly everyone with an internet connection...
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