Yevhenii Kozmenko

This paper presents a comprehensive system of 38 indicators, which allows identification of possible endogenous sources and evaluation of the potential of conflicts of interest arising both at the corporate (in models of ownership, business and financial activities, corporate governance and organizational structures) and operational (analyst) levels of credit rating agencies (CRAs). Testing of proposed system of indicators was carried out based on the content analysis of the public information on the activities of five authorized credit rating agencies of Ukraine.
It is determined that at the beginning of 2017 the most sensitive to the risk of conflicts of interest were “Standard Rating” (74% of threat signals of the total number of indicators), “Expert Rating” (57%) and “Rurik” (37%). The highest potential of conflicts’ of interest escalation was identified in the models of financial activities (80% of threat signals of the total number of indicators of that group) and models of ownership of Ukrainian CRAs (63%).
The estimations of the risk level are proposed to be regarded mainly as signals of the potentially high sensitivity of the particular CRA to the risk of conflicts’ of interest escalation.
Such signals, in particular, can be used by the regulators for carrying out remote monitoring activities of CRAs, for adopting supervisory and regulatory decisions. In turn, managers and owners of rating agencies can conduct a more detailed analysis of the detected potential sources of conflict of interest with the aim of identification, localization, and elimination of shortcomings in the system of conflict of interest management.

Over the last five years, Ukraine suffers from armed conflicts that cause substantial losses in the state budget. In this context, shaping the prospects and developing measures for the post-conflict reconstruction of the state and its economy is an important problem. The very possibility and the effectiveness of such measures will depend on the country's financial potential as well as on the financial strength of its entities. This potential is dynamic and influenced by information technology, without which any institution cannot go.
Given the particular significance of the financial potential IT-transformation, the role of digital forms of money, crowdfunding and initial coin offering (ICO) was identified. It is substantiated that while overcoming the consequences of military conflicts, their implementation facilitates the attraction and acceleration of the financial resources movement. By generalizing the developments and practical experience of Ukrainian fintech-companies, the principles of such developments application for assessing the external financial environment of economic entities and conducting financial analysis have been shaped.

The consolidated state budget expenditures reflect the condition of performance by a country of its basic functions and allow defining priority directions for the implementation of state policy. Their optimal ratio allows satisfying the interests of citizens, business and society as a whole, and can provide a significant impetus for economic growth. The analysis of state budget expenditures using the example of Ukraine showed that their structure is unbalanced. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to find the necessary balance. The optimization of Ukraine’s state budget expenditures was carried out using the simplex method based on their structure from 2007 to 2019. Since the priorities of Ukraine’s strategic economic and political development are the implementation of the EU standards and norms, the structure of the EU’s state budget expenditures is chosen as a guideline for determining the optimal structure of expenditures. As a result, it is determined that in order to harmonize the structure of the Ukrainian budget expenditures with the approaches implemented in the European Union, minimal changes in public order spending are required. In addition, significant areas of funding include healthcare, economic activity, social protection and security. At the same time, intergovernmental transfers need to be significantly reduced, the amount of which should be revised after the completion of the financial decentralization reform.

The military actions in Ukraine have actualized the transformation and revision of existing approaches to assessing the country’s economic security. Financial security, which is considered in this paper through its standard components such as financial sector security, stock market security, debt and budget security, has a significant effect on the formation of economic security. At the same time, digitalization in the financial sector was identified as a new component that provides access to financial resources even in the context of the deployment of hostilities in Ukraine. Therefore, this study assessed the effect of the state of financial security, taking into account the importance of financial digitalization for the economic security of Ukraine.
Based on quarterly data for the period 2015–2021, 42 indicators were analyzed, which were grouped according to the relevant components of financial security, and their integral indicators were determined using the Harrington method. A factor analysis of the formation of economic security was carried out using the principal components analysis, and an integral indicator of a country’s economic security was calculated based on the Kinney multiplicative convolution. The integral indicator of economic security for 2025–2021 doubled and amounted to 0.63 units, which was due to the increased influence of financial digitalization processes, all other components either slowly decreased or were stable. Thus, the reserve of economic security that was formed during this period, including due to the intensive digitalization of the financial sector, allowed Ukraine to survive the first weeks of the war and ensure the functioning of the financial system.

Acknowledgment
Comments from the Editor and anonymous referees have been gratefully acknowledged. Inna Shkolnyk and Yevhenii Kozmenko gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (0122U000774 “Digitalization and transparency of public, corporate and personal finance: the impact on innovation development and national security”).

It is necessary to choose proper methodology and indicators for assessing sustainable economic development as the information becomes a tool for decision-making support of sustainable development policies and implementation of programs. In Ukraine, evaluating the results of implementation of different programs for development is essential as an analytical basis for making a strategy for the next period and a prerequisite for further progress.
Certain shortcomings of linear models for evaluating the results appeared during the design and implementation of the strategy to manage sustainable economic development. The potential for establishing erroneous targets increases in the formation of strategic objectives for the next forecast period. There is a special need to choose adequate indicators to comprehensively approximate the factors of economic development and evaluation methods that allow more sensitively measuring the results of management decisions in the implementation of the strategy.
The article evaluates the results of the Sustainable Development Strategy “Ukraine – 2020”, employing the potential of the neural network method for a flexible combination of a large number of factors in constructing nonlinear models of impact on the resulting indicator. As a result of applying the neural network model with one hidden layer for evaluation, based on 16 indicators identifying economic, social, and institutional aspects of sustainable development of Ukraine, it was found that institutional transformations contribute most to achieving sustainable development. Reforms in terms of deregulation and support of entrepreneurship, property rights protection, and competitive environment have the most significant positive impact. On the other hand, low efficiency of capital market reforms, implementation of the energy efficiency program, and reform in the field of public procurement determine the need to revise the program of their fulfilment.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
The study examines regional convergence and divergence in the development of household solar energy in Ukraine during 2016–2022 and explores implications for adaptive energy management and policy coordination. Using β- and σ-convergence models, the analysis investigates whether regional household solar electricity generation demonstrates tendencies toward structural alignment or, conversely, follows autonomous trajectories that indicate the absence of a common attractor. The results reveal a lack of both beta- and sigma-convergence, implying that initial regional conditions exerted little influence on subsequent development and that disparities across regions have persisted or even deepened over time. These findings suggest a divergent and spatially fragmented pattern of solar energy expansion, where regional dynamics are determined not only by differences in economic and institutional capacity but also by disruptions linked to the onset of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. The study emphasizes the need for a more adaptive and integrated energy policy that recognizes regional heterogeneity, supports decentralized renewable energy deployment, and strengthens coordination between national and local authorities. Such an approach would enhance the effectiveness of planning and implementation of household renewable energy programs, contributing to a more balanced and resilient low-carbon transition in Ukraine.

Acknowledgments
The publication was prepared in the framework of the research project “Formation of economic mechanisms to increase energy efficiency and provide sustainable development of renewable energy in Ukraine’s households” (No. 0122U001233), funded by the National Research Foundation of Ukraine.