Journal of Economics - Obsahy ročníkov

By now the utilisation of theoretical knowledge of forecasting relied on economic system of a national economy. But the share of foreign capital in the national economy is increasing and it is not more possible to explain the phenomenon of economic development – and to forecast too – only on the base of internal disposition of individual countries. There are enclaves emerging in a national economy which are subordinated to different development determinations. These changes are proved not only by evidence but by the theory as well. On other hand, picture of global economy is rather fragmented than compact. It outlines that the processes running in it are fragmentary too. It seems unlikely to work-out its general theory as well. Different starting points are possible for the orientation in such a future development. Among these, the pragmatic solutions of dominating problems raised by acute necessities of development alone are taken for in this article. Keywords:national economy, economic system, globalisation, forecasting JEL Classification: E10, P16, F02, C53

The process of decentralization in SR coerces most of the municipalities to efficient banding together. Inter-municipality cooperation presents one of the background assumptions for more effective administration of transferred competencies under the parallel conditions of solving the problems of small municipalities. It is obvious, that size of the municipality highly influences structure and efficiency of public expenditures. SR has to make close analyses about relations between effective size of self governing entities and range and structure of provided public services. Overall efficiency of local authority expenditures can be discussed only in the terms of establishment of economically rationale number of joined municipal authorities. The future development of inter-municipality cooperation will be influenced by the next steps of modernization and decentralization of public administration. Keywords: inter-municipality cooperation, effective size of self governing entities, joined municipal authorities JEL Classification: R11, R12, R51

We compare the welfare effects of government credit subsidies and guarantees in transition and post-transition economies in the conditions of asymmetric information. We show that the guarantees and subsidies targeted to low risk borrowers decrease efficiency while those targeted to high risk borrowers increase efficiency both in transition and post-transition economies. The uniform non-targeted guarantees improve welfare. The uniform subsidies may be used to improve welfare in the economy subjected to credit rationing, but they do not have any effect on the size of collateral required in post-transition economy. Keywords: transition, credit, subsidies, guarantees JEL Classification: D82, G28, P31

The paper assesses the importance of industry effects present in stock returns, and compares them to country effects. We follow the assumption that strong industry effects might be present as a result of increasing power of globalization and economic integration, which lower the country-level differences. We find this development to be a contradiction to the theories of previous decades that suggested a dominance of country over the industry effects. As the economies change, we expect the country effect to become less dominant, or even fall behind the industry effects. These ideas are used in an application of portfolio management, in which we compare the risk and return characteristics of portfolios created using different strategies. By forming diversified and concentrated portfolios with industrial and country emphasis we show that industry diversification provides the greatest risk reduction. Keywords: diversification, portfolio theory, industry effects, country effects, stock returns JEL Classification: F40, G11, G15

Slovak accession to the European Union presented a challenge connected with deep structural changes in the Slovak economy including analysing food industry and its three processing branches – dairy, meat and poultry industry. The integration into the single European market has brought many advantages and opportunities to Slovak businesses, but simultaneously it has brought an increased competition as well. The main aim of this article is to diagnose the conception of the competitiveness at the food industry level and consequently to formulate some recommendations for the company practice with the aim to preserve and strengthen its competitiveness in the period of Slovak accession to the EU. Keywords: competitiveness, dairy, meat and poultry industry JEL Classification: L66

This article contents the methods and the results of distribution modelling of household’s income in the Slovak Republic based on sampling data of yearly real net income of 1 566 households in year 2002. Goodness of fit tests confirms the Weibull distribution with maximum likelihood estimation of parameters as the best-fit model, except the intervals of the lowest and the highest values of incomes. Two Weibull-Pareto quantile functions have been found as good fit models for the lowest and the highest incomes too. Keywords: the income of households, distribution models, Weibull distribution, Weibull-Pareto distribution, quantil functions JEL Classification: C13, C16, C51, C52