Journal of Economics - Obsahy ročníkov

The balanced positive development of the Slovak economy continued also in 2007 within the economic-political and institutional settings formed by reforms of the former governments. The present left-wing government introduced some slight corrections into the economy, in particular by strengthening the social dimension of using economic results. The positive trends in economic growth, macroeconomic stability and social situation of the population confirm that the corrections of economic reforms have only a partial character and they did not have any impact on the dynamics of the economy in 2007. The rapid economic growth was induced particularly by activities of foreign investors. On the demand side, mainly growth of household and investment demand as well as growth of net export contributed to the economic growth. The paper deals also with development of production, external economic relations, labour market, monetary policy and public finance. Keywords: economic growth, economic policy, country study – Slovakia, forecast, production, balance of payments, external trade, foreign direct investment, labour market, public finance, monetary policy JEL Classification: D11, E23, E37, E52, E62, F14, F32, J20, L60, O10, O52

The overall economic performance is determined by structures and interdependencies between different sectors of the economy. To analyze these direct and undirect relations that are not visible at the first glance we use the open static Leontief model. After explaining the methodology and necessary database we analyze the interdependencies in the Slovak economy based on input-output tables. We evaluate the impacts of final consumption components on total production, employment, value added and imports. To analyze the effects of final consumption we computed the output multiplicator, employment multiplicator, value added multiplicator and import multiplicator. The conclusions are also compared with chosen developed countries. Keywords: Leontief model, input-output tables, structural analysis JEL Classification: C67, D57, E01

The authors present a survey conducted among the biggest investors to the Slovak economy. The aim of this survey was to identify main strategic challenges they face in Slovakia, the implementation of leadership principles in the local subsidiaries and the situation in the diversity of their management. The authors also studied the level of independence of the local subsidiaries from their foreign headquarters as well as main cultural differences between the country of the origin of the investor and Slovak employees. The conclusions based on the research survey are supposed to help investors coming and being active in Slovakia. Keywords: strategy of foreign investors, leadership, diversity, Slovakia JEL Classification: M15, M16

This paper examines the causes and conditions which led to rising oil prices in the international markets. Oil prices are influenced by many factors like supply and demand, political stability, particularly in oil producing countries, the value of US dollar against famous world currencies and the factor of psychology in the oil market etc. In this paper, it is paid a special attention to the weakness of US Dollar against world currencies and particular against Slovak and Czech Crowns and its effect on alleviation the impact of high oil prices on consumers of fuels and on economies of both countries at all. In this paper, it was proved by statistical calculation that, the appreciation of Slovak and Czech Crowns against the US Dollar have absorb substantially the high prices of crude oil in both Slovak and Czech countries. Keywords: oil prices, world economy, the value of US dollar, oil production, Slovak crown, Czech crown JEL Classification: F01, Q4, Q11, Q43