Starting from competitiveness as the ability of an entity (company, sector, state) to successfully increase sales on the domestic and/or international market, and through a balance surplus to create ...growing revenues for its company and/or residents, i.e. the entire country, the concept of competitiveness should be transformed according to today’s business conditions. Competitiveness was initially related to cost, and sales grew due to lower product prices, and later due to productivity and better product quality. Today’s consumer is not only interested in price and quality, but also in environmental sustainability and social responsibility, and customers are looking for sustainable products. This paper investigates the relationship between the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) index on a sample of 27 member states of the European Union in the period 2007-2017, with the main goal and purpose of determining the direction and strength of the relationship and creating a platform for the necessity of redesigning the GCI. The impact of climate change on the GCI was examined by the Sustainable Development Index. For this purpose, Difference GMM was used. The results show that SDG12 (waste generation) hurts competitiveness, while SDG14 (maritime, ocean conservation) has a positive impact on competitiveness. This study contributes to the ongoing discourse on the intersection of competitiveness and sustainability, providing a foundation for future discussions and potential reconstructions of indices that reflect the changing global environment.
The paper brings the analysis of the emigration effects on financial and political sustainability of pension systems in 11 new European Union member states: Bulgaria, Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, ...Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Hungary. The panel data analysis (fixed effects model) covers the crisis and post-crisis period from 2008 to 2017. The obtained results show that emigration growth is positively related to the pension expenditures (expressed as a share in GDP), thus having a negative impact on financial sustainability of pension system. On the other side, the emigration effect on social sustainability of pension system which is encompassed by the median relative income (65+) is not statistically significant. However, through including other socio-economic and political factors in econometric models besides the emigration (e.g. unemployment rate, education, political cycles, old-age dependency ratio, replacement ratio), the results have confirmed that there is a trade-off between the two goals of pension policies, i.e. between financial and political sustainability of pension system.
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European Union (EU) is facing large migration flows, whose distribution and volatility in the observed period between 2006 and 2015 across the EU member states, among other factors, were affected by ...the financial and economic crisis. This paper examines how the homogeneity of the EU member states was changing with respect to economic performance and migration statistics indicators. Consequently, the non-hierarchical cluster analysis by using k-means method was conducted based on the average values of the selected variables in four time periods: the pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis periods. The fourth period is year 2015, the beginning of massive immigration in the EU area due to world migration crisis. Our results indicate relative stability of the number and structure of clusters of EU-28 member states in the selected time periods on the bases of observed variables. There are few exceptions, however, related to countries that were heavily influenced by the financial and economic crisis, and Germany which stood out with decreasing unemployment rates and increasing net migration values in the post-crisis period.
The paper brings the analysis of the emigration effects on financial and political sustainability of pension systems in 11 new European Union member states: Bulgaria, Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, ...Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Hungary. The panel data analysis (fixed effects model) covers the crisis and post-crisis period from 2008 to 2017. The obtained results show that emigration growth is positively related to the pension expenditures (expressed as a share in GDP), thus having a negative impact on financial sustainability of pension system. On the other side, the emigration effect on social sustainability of pension system which is encompassed by the median relative income (65+) is not statistically significant. However, through including other socio-economic and political factors in econometric models besides the emigration (e.g. unemployment rate, education, political cycles, old-age dependency ratio, replacement ratio), the results have confirmed that there is a trade-off between the two goals of pension policies, i.e. between financial and political sustainability of pension system.
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The purpose of the paper is to analyse the effects of interpersonal trust in business relations (proxied by trade credit) and institutional trust (proxied by firms' trust in courts) on firms' ...performance. The analysis is performed on a specific sample of 1298 firms in Western Balkan countries which are usually characterized by negative social capital that is considered to hinder economic and social development at all levels. The methodological approach is based on the propensity score matching method and the obtained results show that firms' perception of courts as fair, impartial and uncorrupted, is connected with lower costs and with positive expectations of an increase in sales in the upcoming period. On the other side, trade credit as a trust variable has a statistically significant and positive effect on firm productivity measured as sales per employee and on expectations of an increase in sales in the upcoming period. The paper contributes to the existing literature in terms of the choice of the post-socialist groups of countries for the analysis, the method that is used (treatment-effects estimation), and in terms of performing firm-level analysis of the effects of two types of trust on selected variables of firm performance.
This paper examines the determinants of profitability for construction companies in Croatia. Sample includes more than 8678 construction companies covering the period from 2003 to 2014 what present ...11 years of observation including Croatian milestone in joining to the European Union as well as global financial crises. The authors analyze theoretical background and use empirical research to investigate the relation between profitability and selected determinants like price cost margin, concentration index, growth, size, material costs and lagged profitability. Special remarks are given with review of construction sector importance for the growth of the Croatian economy and repercussions of global financial crises. According to that, for the empirical part of the article generalized method of moments for dynamic panel model has been used which has given significant results. Overall, the results have proved a strong relationship between company size, concentration index, growth, lagged profitability and profitability besides number of employees.
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This paper analyses the effects of emigration on emigrant countries' unemployment rates (short-term effect) in selected EU emigrant countries. The panel data analysis (fixed-effects model) covers the ...period from 2004 to 2015, and a total of nine EU countries: Bulgaria; Estonia; Greece; Croatia; Latvia; Lithuania; Poland; Portugal; and Romania. The obtained results show that emigration increases the unemployment rate in emigrant countries confirming that, besides generally expected positive effects in terms of a fall in unemployment, emigration could also have an adverse effect on emigrant countries' labour markets. Such results point to structural issues in the labour market caused by emigration, i.e., an increase in the labour supply and demand mismatch, which is discussed in the paper through the descriptive analysis of Job Vacancy Rate (JVR) data.
This article is envisioned as a first step in a comprehensive analysis of the European Union's (EU) industrial base, designed to inform the current debate, and future policy decisions regarding ...deindustrialisation and reindustrialisation in the EU. We focus on the study of deindustrialisation and productivity, to determine the causes of deindustrialisation and its relation to productivity in the EU, and whether it can be explained primarily as a natural process, or alternatively as a negative economic trend. Our results indicate that the main causes of deindustrialisation in the EU were shifting demand patterns caused by rising GDP per capita, followed by growing international trade which corroborates the hypothesis that the process is natural. In the second part we take a closer look at manufacturing productivity as an integral cause of deindustrialisation. We analyse the impact of market dynamics, concentration and firm size on manufacturing productivity, where we find evidence which supports the conclusion that a higher level of market dynamics increases productivity, while firm size and market concentration seem to decrease industry productivity.
This paper examines the determinants of profitability for construction companies in Croatia. Sample includes more than 8678 construction companies covering the period from 2003 to 2014 what present ...11 years of observation including Croatian milestone in joining to the European Union as well as global financial crises. The authors analyze theoretical background and use empirical research to investigate the relation between profitability and selected determinants like price cost margin, concentration index, growth, size, material costs and lagged profitability. Special remarks are given with review of construction sector importance for the growth of the Croatian economy and repercussions of global financial crises. According to that, for the empirical part of the article generalized method of moments for dynamic panel model has been used which has given significant results. Overall, the results have proved a strong relationship between company size, concentration index, growth, lagged profitability and profitability besides number of employees.
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Unlike the old member states that compensate the negative net birth rate with immigration, the new EU member states face both migrational and natural demographic decline. In the last decade, poor ...level of economic development as well as the accession to the EU encouraged net emigration from the new member states. Panel data for the 12 new member states for the 2007 - 2016 period were used to determine how the length of membership and GDP per capita trailing behind the EU average affect the proportion of the net emigration. It has been shown that on average a country has to reach at least 85 percent of the average EU GDP p.c. (measured in PPS) to prevent emigration, but this level increases with each year of membership by 1.37 percentage points.
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