Sustainable development is critical to ensure the future of humanity. Therefore, the assessment and governance of sustainability becomes a central challenge our society is facing. This paper provides a novel ICT framework for addressing sustainable development goals. It is characterized by both local and global considerations, in the context of economic, ecological, and social aspects of sustainable development. The framework consists of three modules: data module, sustainability module, and governance module. Data module integrates data from several sources, processes data, infers knowledge, and transforms data into understandable information and knowledge. The second module implements SDGs at the level of municipality/city, ensures ranking of locally transformed SDGs to arrange them in line with the values and needs of the local communities, and proposes an integrated approach in modeling the social-ecological systems. By implementing governance theories, the governance module permits an effective citizen engagement in governance of SDGs. The ICT framework addresses short-term and long-term SDGs and allows for the vertical and horizontal linkages among diverse stakeholders, as well as for their contributions to the nested rule structures employed at operational, collective, and constitutional levels. Thus, the framework we provide here ensures a paradigm shift in approaching SDGs for the advancement of our society.

The research on core-periphery structure of global trade from a complex-network perspective has shown that the world system is hierarchically organized into blocks and that countries play different roles in the world economy. Yet, little attention has been paid to investigating whether the sectoral international trade networks conform to a core-periphery structure, hence what is the role of different levels of processing in creating and maintaining structural inequality. This issue is of particular importance given the contemporary focus upon global production networks and reshaping of the international division of labor. With this in mind, we propose a model (LARDEG) from network science to reexamine old theories in economics, such as core-periphery structures in sectoral international trade networks and test whether the global value chains have changed structural positions in terms of the level of processing. The economic background of our model permitting a more accurate sorting of countries into structural positions and the general stability of results have provided for a more solid measurements than has hereto been possible. Our algorithm naturally produces networks with hierarchically nested block structure obtained from an iterative decomposition of the network periphery such that each block represents a vertex set of a maximal size subgraph existing at different levels. The results not only lend support to the previous hierarchical model of the world-system (core, semi-periphery, and periphery) but also find that, depending on particular industry, the number of analytically identifiable blocks could be more than three. We show that 'size effect' is the one that prevails for core block membership at the first hierarchical level, while the GNI per capita is a much poorer proxy for the world-system status. Moreover, the patterns of blocks we label as the second-or third-level 'core' are strongly dependent on distance and geographical proximity. Overall, the various configurations of asymmetrical trade patterns between our blocks and the remarkably stable position of core countries at the top of structure clearly indicate that the rise of global production networks has actually restored a huge and unequal international division of labor splitting the world into 'headquarter' and 'factory' economies.

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The aim of this paper is to evaluate how well-prepared the Western Balkans (Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia)

The expansion of global production networks has raised many important questions about the interdependence among countries and how future changes in the world economy are likely to affect the countries' positioning in global value chains. We are approaching the structure and lengths of value chains from a completely different perspective than has been available so far. By assigning a random endogenous variable to a network linkage representing the number of intermediate sales/purchases before absorption (final use or value added), the discrete-time absorbing Markov chains proposed here shed new light on the world input/output networks. The variance of this variable can help assess the risk when shaping the chain length and optimize the level of production. Contrary to what might be expected simply on the basis of comparative advantage, the results reveal that both the input and output chains exhibit the same quasi-stationary product distribution. Put differently, the expected proportion of time spent in a state before absorption is invariant to changes of the network type. Finally, the several global metrics proposed here, including the probability distribution of global value added/final output, provide guidance for policy makers when estimating the resilience of world trading system and forecasting the macroeconomic developments.

This paper examines the sectoral specialisation and competitiveness of Macedonia in relation to that of the EU28, using four indices of revealed comparative advantage for the years 2000-2015. Additionally, we estimate the stability of the distribution and of the value of trade specialisation indices over time, as well as the duration and probability of the long-term survival of continuing export competitiveness. The findings suggest that the structure of Macedonia's comparative advantage has changed somewhat over the past few years, and there is also evidence of a weakening in the level of comparative advantage as revealed by the Balassa (B) index. The comparisons made between the implied (theoretically derived) probability distributions and their empirical counterparts demonstrate that the Markov transition probabilities accurately characterise the data-generating process that highlights the distributions of the B index, and thus allow for obtaining a precise prediction about the probability distribution vectors, including the limiting distribution. Finally, the results of estimating the survival function show that the survival times of revealed comparative advantage are not persistent over the period observed. The continuous decline in the chance of certain product groups surviving indicates that Macedonia is becoming increasingly vulnerable to competition from other markets.KEY WORDS: revealed comparative advantage, Markov chain model, mobility index, survival analysis

Measuring the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on the economy is a major challenge and a research question standing at the forefront of economics in the past years. In terms of methodologies, two approaches have been followed extensively, i.e. the standard growth accounting methodology and the regression-based models. This paper aims at developing an alternative approach to studying the usage and impact of ICTs. For this purpose, a two-step methodology is proposed here. At first, hierarchical cluster analysis is used to provide an objective clustering of countries (Macedonia and EU-28) according to 53 indicator values/scores of the Networked Readiness Index. Furthermore, a system dynamics model is proposed to simulate the evolution of the NRI indicator values for Macedonia. This second step allows for examining the potential of the country to improve its rankings on a global scale and thus, become better at leveraging ICTs for increased competitiveness and well-being. Beyond the rankings, the proposed methodology can serve as a useful guide for those attributes Macedonia should focus on in order to improve its position relative to other countries, i.e. to move from its current to the next higher cluster.

Abstract. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become more accessible, more powerful and more widespread. Yet, the use of ICTs is not an end in itself. The impact that such technologies have on the economy and society is what ultimately matters. Understanding the economics of ICTs requires a deep and thorough knowledge of how the new technology generates the economic impacts. The ICT revolution holds the transformative potentials, offering many promises and benefits, even while posing severe risks and challenges. Therefore, it is of great importance and still a challenge to measure the capacity of countries to leverage ICTs for increased competitiveness and wellbeing. Aimed at reaching such a complex task, this paper employs the extensive data compendium of the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) 2015 and a set of supplemental data analysis tools (descriptive statistics, five-number summary statistics and a Box & Whisker plot, Euclidean and statistical distances, hierarchical cluster analysis and a corresponding dendrogram) to estimate both the performance of Macedonia in the NRI and the country's relative position vis-à-vis the EU member states. Looking at the trends since 2012 reveals that Macedonia is one of the ten most improved countries in their overall NRI performance. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that the country is lagging behind the European average in most indicators. The EU member states with the shortest statistical distance from Macedonia are Croatia, Cyprus, Romania, Hungary and Slovenia. Quite the reverse, the Nordics (Finland, Sweden and Denmark) and Western Europe (Luxemburg, Netherlands and UK) are the most 'distant' countries from Macedonia. These latter findings confirm the results obtained by the five-number summary statistics and the hierarchical cluster analysis.