Foreword

In a world where almost everything can be sold and bought, where the resources fall and the needs grow, we really need vanguard scientific knowledge. Sharing and exchange of experience is an essential mean to achieve an effective opening, enabling communication across borders. Taking into consideration the communication in higher education, we get to talk about a specialized literature, coming from the research of some areas more and narrower of knowledge, a literature which is specializing and diversifying more and more. In such a context, a researcher is "condemned" to access to a very small but very specialized part of what is called the scientific literature. This could cause a dangerous isolation of the researcher, with a negative effect upon the progress of science itself. Here comes on the scientific events, electronic journals, with their role of providing to the researchers, not only a suitable area for their arrangements, but also suggestions for new directions and possible manners of approach, opening new horizons of knowledge. What remains specialized in a magazine that focuses on a particular area is the reader, becoming for the authors of various works a real challenge. Submitting to the trajectory of the challenges and the scientific means, European Research Studies Journal (ERSJ) fully serves the research in the field of economic sciences; it is well ranked within the European publications, and for us represents a publishing milestone worthy to be followed. The prefaced special issue includes the best ten works presented within the second edition of the international scientific event “Competitiveness and Stability in the Knowledge-Based Economy” held at the University of Craiova, Romania, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, in partnership with Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen in the Netherlands and Science Invest Bourgas, Union of Scientists in Bulgaria, during the 30th of May - 01st of June 2008. On this occasion, on behalf of our institution, we send once again congratulations to the guests and permanent referents, to Dr. Prof. El Thalassinos, General Editor of ERSJ and Jean Monnet Chair, but also to all the participants at the conference, which, together with the organizers, have made possible the successful development of the event. A general overview upon the content of the conference's special issue proves that the studies are within the general theme of the conference, with the vast variety of topics systematized in the twelve sections and surprise the deepness of the tests and the richness of ideas. Being aware of the difficulty of the final selection from the external reviewers of the Journal of the most interesting, expressive and authentic works to be published in the special issue of ERSJ, we appreciate the professionalism of the approach, as an impulse of the development of the competition, knowledge and inter-university collaboration on the Old Continent. The selected areas and works cover one of the most specialized fields: managerial performances through the cost-benefit analysis, exchange rates of Central and Eastern Europe, unemployment and the Gross Domestic Product, tax competition and the effect of brain drain, audit, rates for life insurance premiums, the dynamics of inflation and its relationship with the exchange rate, monetary indicators and Eurosystem. Being guided by the spirit of "per aspera, ad astra!" we are confident that these works shall bring an abundance of knowledge in the field of economic sciences. The supreme respect of an author towards the reader is that of never bringing him what is expected of him, but what he himself considers reasonable and necessary in the realm of national and international culture.