Vol. 8 No. 2 (2022)

While the world is still dealing with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic it faces new political, social and economic challenges arising from the war at the interface between Europe and Asia—on the edge of the European Union. In such circumstances the functioning of economies, financial markets and businesses is significantly hampered and requires increased efforts by policymakers and market participants to forecast key processes now happening at an accelerated pace, evaluate their potential consequences and find ways to mitigate the associated risks. The current increase in volatility is a stark reminder of a number of fundamental questions that need to be constantly answered in new contexts: How can sudden shifts in financial markets be anticipated more effectively especially with the use of modern technologies? How to design investment portfolios in uncertain times? Can new, alterna-tive asset classes perform useful functions in this regard or are these assets more likely to cause market disturbances in the future? How to shape operations and corporate governance of businesses to avoid additional, unnecessary internal disruptions and costs? How to model and price market risk during a period of rapidly increasing inflation and interest rates? What is the impact of inevitably rising arms spending on the world economy and individual countries? Is military expenditure the only rational way to ensure regional and global security? How should regulators counter the negative effects of labour market uncertainty? Are the world and individual countries doomed to widening economic inequalities? What are the counter measures? The current issue of Economics and Business Review consists of seven papers and aims to provide answers to these fundamental questions in the context of ongoing trends in the economy, financial markets and businesses. It contains both theoretical and empirical contributionsby fifteen authors from Germany, Nigeria, Poland and Romania. (Konrad Sobański)