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.

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.

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.

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.

On November 12, 2021 at the University of National and World Economy under the patronage of the Rector Prof. Dr. Dimitar Dimitrov was held an annual scientific conference on "Economic challenges: crisis, recovery, sustainability". The special guest of the event was Mr. Atanas Pekanov, Deputy Prime Minister for the Management of EU Funds. The forum was attended by representatives of employers, trade unions, central and local government and NGOs. Guests were also Prof. Dr. Mihail Musov, Deputy Rector for Research and International Cooperation, and Prof. Dr. Rosen Kirilov, Deputy Rector for Digitalization and Cyber Security. As the organizer of the conference, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ivaylo Beev, Head of the Economics Department of the UNWE, noted his satisfaction with the wide attendance at this traditional forum. He drew attention to the fact that despite its regular holding for the Department of Economics this is the most important event of the year. "This is the time when we check our watches with the college, with the practice, with the students and their views. The responsibility of this forum is to maintain the leading position of the department and the university in the development of economic science."

David Hume (1711-1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian and economist who, in just nine essays, part of his Political Discourses (first published in 1752 and then revised and undergoing numerous editions and revisions until his death), made an important critique of so-called mercantilist ideas on money, prices, international trade, taxation and employment. In the same year, 1752, which some consider to be the early dawn of economic science, Adam Smith was a student at Oxford and was reprimanded by his tutor for reading these newly published essays. This did not prevent this other Scotsman from becoming, in 1776, after the publication of The Wealth of Nations, a major enlightener in this field of human knowledge. What are some of Hume's major contributions according to modern views? First, his analysis of the mechanism of how prices are influenced by monetary money flows largely refutes the mercantilist thinking that the state should always strive for a positive trade balance. Second, Hume's positive attitude toward manufactures and crafts exposes the limited views of the Physiocrats. Third, in discussing taxation, he initiated economists' consideration of the problems of personal and corporate income that resulted from taxation and customs. Whereas Hume's multi-volume History of England, published between 1754 and 1761, enjoyed some success among readers in the 18th century and gained financial independence, his philosophical and economic ideas seem to be more popular in modern times.

Bien qu’annoncée et/ou attendue par certains experts du domaine, la Covid est apparue en Novembre 2019 en Chine et a été déclarée comme „pandémie“ en Mars 2020 par l’Organisation Mondiale de la Santé. Elle a surpris le monde entier par son ampleur, sa vitesse de propagation, son insolence, son apatridie, son irrespect des niveaux de développement des pays, et par-dessus tout sa cruauté. Elle a plongé le monde dans un état de léthargie et d’hibernation rarement observé dans la période contemporaine, et a obligé la vie à se retirer de ses espaces habituels de déploiement. Dans un contexte d’épouvante aussi désarticulé, et si l’on convient avec Robbins (1932, p. 15) que “Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses”, il peut être utile de s’interroger sur la force des lois, des règles et autres théorèmes énoncés par une telle science face à une pandémie dont l’indice de gravité n’a d’égal que celui de la grippe espagnole de 1918-1921. Pour ce faire, nous utilisons une méthodologie analytique en ce sens qu’en reprenant brièvement les idées des six premiers des douze penseurs séminaux identifiés par Yueh (2019) (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, Irving Fisher, John Maynard Keynes), nous tentons de discuter de la résistance de leurs idées (ou de la permanence de la pertinence de leurs résultats) à l’aune de la pandémie. Le résultat indique que toutes les idées ne sont pas immuables.

The dynamics of trade flows has a strong impact on the development of Bulgaria's economic specialisation and is an important condition for strengthening its competitive position. Changes in international business, conditioned by the development of global value chains, define a new structure of industries and of export and import potential, and this leads to the conclusion of regional trade agreements that challenge national competitiveness. It is the great importance of these problems for the future foreign economic relations of our country and the ways of finding solutions that provoked the research interest of the authors of the recently published book "Bulgaria in International Economic Specialization" (see Panushev, Hristova-Balkanska, Hubenova-Delisivkova, Marinov, Stefanova, 2021). Carried out within the framework of the research programme of the Institute of Economic Research at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the study presents the changes in theoretical concepts and models of international specialisation, Bulgaria's place in the structure of trade flows and approaches to assessing economic specialisation. The authors focus on regional economic structures and internationally defined patterns of specialization, which are the basis for national and firm strategy and policy building. The book explores the conceptual approaches of classical and contemporary theories of international trade and their interpretation in assessing changes in the world economy. It analyses the changes in Bulgaria's international specialisation, influenced by our inclusion in the common framework of the single European market, which intensifies competition between EU member states and leads to a restructuring of firms' activities. This also determines the changes in both intra-industry trade and trade with third countries. The authors point out that international specialisation based on international technological differences will create modern competitive advantages for Bulgaria and contribute to its inclusion in global value chains. The challenge for Bulgarian firms is partnership with European companies and "the distribution of productivity gains depending on and resulting from technological progress in Bulgarian production".