Within the context of the continuing integration process in Europe, this paper addresses the question of whether policies in the EU should head towards autonomy, coordination or harmonization. Taking the path dependence effect into account, it is the authors' opinion that Europe has gone too far in its integration process to be able to continue with policies being fully under the competences of individual member countries. However, the habitual question still arises: does fiscal policy need to be harmonized to a level comparable to monetary policy as these two policies, necessarily, complement each other? This paper argues that it does not. There are three main arguments discussed. Firstly, the authors build on the theory of fiscal federalism. Secondly, there are significantly different regimes of welfare states and extents of social policies among European countries, which strongly determine the character of public finance. And thirdly, the tax systems across Europe are also highly divergent, with many features of continuing tax competition.
Road transport has become the major source of environmental pollution and it is also one of the biggest environmental risks in the EU countries. Good air quality is very important for population as pollutants have negative impacts on human health. The paper deals with relationship between air pollutants generated by road transport and the life expectancy in EU countries. At the beginning of the paper the main pollutants from motor vehicles are described and impact on human health is summarized too. We use regression analysis of panel data to analyse the relationship between chosen air pollutants and life expectancy. Our results show negative impacts of nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide, specifically reduction in life expectancy by 1.49 years for nitrogen oxides and 0.28 years for sulphur oxides with an increase of the pollutant by 1%. So according to our findings economic policy makers should focus primarily on the reduction of nitrogen and sulphur oxides.
The main aim of the paper is to identify and quantify the infl uence of the political environment on the infl ows of foreign direct investment in emerging markets. The paper defi nes emerging markets as Middle Income Countries according to the evaluation of the World Bank. Our sample of countries contains 78 states. The reference period focuses on the period of 1996-2012 due to data availability. The evaluation of the political environment is based on three dimensions: the quality of democracy, political instability and the level of corruption, which are related to three subcomponents of the concept, Governance Matters, provided by the World Bank. The paper distinguishes between two types of political instability omitted in thematic literature, elite and non-elite. The former represents non-violent instability (minority governments, tension related to the holding of elections) while the latter deals with violent forms of instability (civil wars, coups, ethnic and religious riots). The paper uses panel data regression analysis for the purpose of identifi cation and quantifi cation. The research uses fi xed eff ects model with a cluster option. According to the results, the infl uence of the political environment on FDI is not entirely unequivocal in emerging markets; nevertheless, there is a statistically signifi cant dimension -political instability (both parts). The quality of democracy and the level of corruption are signifi cant only in some cases. The paper combines indicators frequently occurring in empirical literature (the Corruption Perception Index, Freedom in the World, Governance Matters) with alternative proxies (the Herfi ndahl Index Government, the Political Terror Scale, the State Fragility Index), which seem to be a perspective for a future research.
This article deals with a comparison of the impact of institutional environment on the competitiveness of Croatia and Serbia between 2000 and 2010. After 2000, both states began to implement institutional and economic reforms. Institutional environment is measured and evaluated by concept Governance Matters of World Bank. Because of limited extent of the text, two indicators of the Governance Matters concept-the level of political stability and the level of rule of law-were chosen for a deeper analysis. Competitiveness is determined by the World Competitiveness Index of World Economic Forum. The paper concludes that institutional environment is a weakness of both countries and the slow dynamics of institutional change is, in accord with new institutional economics and new political economy one of the reasons why both countries have had slow growth of competitiveness and in global comparison have fallen behind.
The aim of the paper is to identify whether electoral uncertainty affects corporate investment, which may cause cyclical fluctuations in European countries. More specifically, the paper focuses on the development of a net fixed-asset investment from 2006 to 2015. Electoral uncertainty is associated with the parliamentary election term since this is the most common election type. The paper is focused on 268,000 firms within the secondary sector (NACE Rev. 2 Sections C -F; Amadeus database). The results suggest that electoral uncertainty may have a negative impact on investment in the secondary sector. Comparing individual industries shows that the negative impact may occur in the construction industry, whereas the effect is statistically inconclusive in the case of manufacturing. Considering the size of the enterprises, electoral uncertainty has a greater impact on SMEs, generally in the secondary sector and, more specifically, in construction. Extending the topic of the economic consequences of the political cycle, including the impact of electoral uncertainty on corporate investment across sectors and business sizes, can be considered as the main contribution of the article.
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