In modern economies services are dominant. As the role of services is increasing, the difference between goods and services is vanishing, but most of our economics and business knowledge is developed from a manufacturing perspective which is no more satisfactory in the new service economy conditions. One important aspect is that the ability of a country to participate effectively to the growing international trade in services depends more and more

This communication presents the results of an exploratory survey carried on in the first half of year 2009 among 180 executives representing a large diversity of Romanian enterprises, with regard to the importance of servic-es as intermediate inputs, the perspectives regarding the demand for ser-vices, the characteristics which significantly influence the differences be-tween enterprises with regard to their purchases of services. The main difficulties

The main instruments that ensure the free movement of goods on the big European market are the European directives, harmonized standards, accreditation, conformity assessment, testing and metrology. The rendition or setting up of these instruments do not signify that the economic agents are immediately capable to use them in an optimal way. It is necessary to build a national infrastructure, aligned with the European and international practices,

As part of a strategic approach to answer the raising concern about environment degradation and waste of resources, a number of initiatives were deployed, aiming to provide more effective incentives required to improve the ecological performance of production and consumption, including ISO 14000 standards, systems of environment impact assessment, regional and national systems of ecological labeling. In the European Union, eco-labeling and the European

Highly performing innovative business services became important factors of competitiveness in modern economies, but their potential contribution is severely restricted by market dysfunctions, as companies reported during previous studies. There is also a lack of adequate policies partly explained by the fact that the services related knowledge is underdeveloped and poorly disseminated among decision makers. Having found that quality uncertainty limit

In the case of services there is no consensus about the way in which quality should be evaluated. The problem appears to be complex, especially for services the market of which is prejudiced by high information asymmetry. This is why business services – especially the knowledge intensive ones - tend to be expensive but of an uncertain value, distorting the market and compromising the competitiveness of their client industries. The authors make

While business services, and especially knowledge intensive ones, are key inputs, having a decisive contribution to the competitiveness of their client industries, the determinants of the market for such services are not entirely clarified. We found that quality uncertainty and information asymmetry generate incentives for poor quality and low performance, and drastically limit the market size and its growth prospects. Aiming at animating the efforts

The conceptual analysis of the meaning, quality and productivity of ser-vices in the Romanian economy, the structural insight into the highly var-ied universe of these activities, identifying the distinctive level and struc-ture dynamics of the tertiary sector, defining and delineating Juglar cycles, ever more clearly outlined by the services index, are the main aims of this article. The methodological landmarks are fully statistical, the analysis