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 paper aims to provide analysis on the determinants of export performance on the extensive data-set of the 27 European Union member states' total manufacturing and high tech manufacturing industry. Hence, this paper adds to the existing empirical work by specifying an export performance equation not only as a function of income and price, as is traditionally done, but also industrial production and labour cost. For that purpose, dynamic panel data models are estimated by utilising the system GMM estimator for the period from 2000 to 2011. The obtained results indicate that both industrial production and domestic demand have a positive and statistically significant impact on total and high tech manufacturing exports. On the other hand, it is proven that foreign demand also has an impact on total manufacturing exports. Thus, the paper's contribution is reflected in the acknowledgement that a stable macroeconomic environment (contained in the significance of a dummy variable for the economic crisis in both models), boosting production capacity and domestic demand, is essential for better export performance and the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry in an increasingly competitive global economic climate. Finally, from the perspective of policy-making, the paper concludes that recovery in the manufacturing industry could be the much needed push from crisis to economic development.

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SMEs are the most dynamic and vibrant part of the enterprise sector in terms of start-ups and new jobs, and a significant share of the EU?s total innovation activities take place within them. This paper uses the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2014 and eCORDA data to analyse whether SME participation in EU research and innovation (R&I) funding programmes has increased their innovation activities and business performance. To achieve this, we empirically test whether SMEs that received EU funds recorded an improvement in their innovation and economic performance. This is measured by research and development (R&D) expenditure, product innovation, turnover, and employment. The paper focusses particularly on new EU member countries and among them to those from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It explores the theoretical and methodological backgrounds that guided us in these analyses and performs treatment effect analysis at firm level, using CIS CDROM data that we received on request from Eurostat. The obtained results indicate that EU R&I funding is beneficial to the innovation activities of SME recipients, and to their overall business performance. It also assists new EU member states in the process of ?catching up? to the growth levels of more established EU economies.

The Innovation Union flagship initiative, with its accompanying policies and actions, strives to ensure stronger involvement of SMEs in EU R&I programs.The main idea behind this paper is to review and discuss the impacts of SMEs' participation in EU R&D programs as a way of boosting their innovation activities. The paper addresses several research questions that help us to present the effects of increased availability of EU R&D funding on boosting innovation activities of SMEs across EU. We start by examining the current innovation performance of EU SMEs based on selected descriptive statistics and indicators.After that, we turn to elaborating the empirical and theoretical foundations and rationale for increased public funding through the EU R&D programs targeting SMEs. Then we discuss the impact of FP7, CIP, Eurostars, and Horizon 2020 funding on SME recipients. We briefly survey the results of available empirical studies that use both quantitative and qualitative evidence, and examine their outcomes in terms of direct and indirect impacts on innovation activities in EU member state SMEs. The examined empirical evidence points to several positive effects of participating in EU R&D programs on incentivizing innovation activities, output, and performance of recipient SMEs.

This article compares the applicability of both the gradual and the shock therapy approach to reform implementation in large-scale change. Using quantitative data, it aims to provide more evidence for the lessons learned from post-socialist transformation. Hence it adds a theoretical and an empirical contribution to the body of literature on great transformations, focusing on their speed and the acceptability of related policy solutions. Despite the predominant inclination towards the gradualist approach to reforms in the initial transition years, economic indicators suggest that the big bang reformers have demonstrated a superior performance over the last (few) decade(s). Still, the approach to (post-)transition processes should be multidimensional and include more than the speed of transformation and key economic indicators. Therefore, a quantitative analysis covers several aspects of socioeconomic change. The analysis of the quality of democracy, market economy, and management performance in post-socialist EU member states indicates that over the last decade the countries that applied the shock therapy approach have performed significantly better in all these areas. This suggests that slow reformers are lagging behind in the development of democratic institutions and a modern market economy, and presumably have insufficient capacities to rapidly catch up with fast reformers. Further research on this topic should tackle the deep roots of socioeconomic development and path-dependent choices (reform speed included), proximity to Western countries, the possible effects of other specific circumstances (such as war), the importance of selected institutions on the performance of post-socialist non-EU member states, and other limitations.

Although both theoretically and methodologically controversial, measuring competitiveness at sub-national level remains an exciting challenge for analysts. The paper starts with the review of the recent theoretical and empirical literature on regional competitiveness in the European Union, followed by empirical analysis of competitiveness of Croatian regions, tackling differences between the hard data and the survey data as well as clustering the Croatian regions based on their main competitive strengths and weaknesses.

This paper presents an overview of theoretical and empirical research on the interaction between political institutions and economic variables. Using the dynamic panel model, the paper also investigates the indirect effects of electoral systems on the size of general government spending. The analysis is performed on a panel dataset of 26 countries (25 member states of the European Union and Croatia) for the period between 1995 and 2010. The results show that government fragmentation and political stability affect the dynamics of budgetary expenditures in line with theoretical assumptions. Regarding the implications of this research for Croatia, it has been shown that a higher degree of government fragmentation leads to an increase in government spending which is a significant result since Croatia has generally had some form of coalition government