Determinants of tourism industry in selected European countries: a smooth partial least squares approach

Various events, such as the global economic crisis, have seriously hampered long-term stable tourism processes with a particular relevance to international visits. In this study, we use the smooth paths of partial least squares (PLS; more specifically its PLS-SVD algorithm) and principal component analysis (PCA) dependent on a time parameter to descriptively examine the multivariate connections of tourism and economic growth during the periods close to the crisis. A novel approach regarding the paths of leading singular values and corresponding singular vectors and describing the maximum covariance strength reveals many practical outputs as time lags and mutual connections between sets of data. From the base of Central European countries analysed here, only Switzerland shows a significant tourism lagged situation, where the results provide relative perceptive conditions to non-residents with stable conditions for domestic tourism. Our findings show great evidence of similar behaviour in the Austria, Slovenia and Poland group as well as the Czech Republic and Slovakia group. Also the Czech Republic and Slovakia are potentially very sensitive to non-resident visits. Germany reveals its strong interconnection to the European economy. On the other hand, in the case of Hungary, simultaneous changes in income and consumer prices form ideal conditions for tourism

Accessibility of websites of the European national tourism boards

Purpose: The aim is to find out the current state of accessibility of the websites of European national tourism boards. Furthermore, the identification of the most common errors in terms of accessibility as well as recommendations leading to their correction is aimed for. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on methods of testing the availability of web systems. The testing included automated tools, namely AChecker and Accessibility Evaluation Tool, as well as the WCAG 2.1 checklist developed by WebAIM initiative. Findings: The research has shown a relatively high accessibility of those websites. Nevertheless, some accessibility violations have been identified that can significantly complicate the accessibility of those websites for users using various assistive devices or other alternative hardware or software means. The most commonly identified errors include: failure to use alternative text for content-relevant images, the absence of text or audio transcripts for videos shared via Youtube, missing descriptions for text form elements and missing label for search form. Practical implications: The results of the research can be used in the evaluation of web presentations at the level of tourism boards and destination management. Originality/Value: The main output of this article is the application of web testing methodology on a comprehensive set of national tourist boards.peer-reviewe

Energy security issues in contemporary Europe

Throughout the history of mankind, energy security has been always seen as a means of protection from disruptions of essential energy systems. The idea of protection from disorders emerged from the process of securing political and military control over energy resources to set up policies and measures on managing risks that affect all elements of energy systems. The various systems placed in a place to achieve energy security are the driving force towards the energy innovations or emerging trends in the energy sector. Our paper discusses energy security status and innovations in the energy sector in European Union (EU). We analyze the recent up-to-date developments of the energy policy and exploitation of energy sources, as well as scrutinize the channels of energy streaming to the EU countries and the risks associated with this energy import. Moreover, we argue that the shift to the low-carbon production of energy and the massive deployment of renewable energy sources (RES) might become the key issue in ensuring the energy security and independency of the EU from its external energy supplies. Both RES, distributed energy resources (DER) and “green energy” that will be based on the energy efficiency and the shift to the alternative energy supply might change the energy security status quo for the EU

Ukrajinski migranti u Europskoj uniji: komparativna studija Češke Republike i Italije

This paper aims to provide a comparative analysis of links between personal characteristics and remittance behavior as well as to investigate the determinants of integration and to validate the remittance decay hypothesis in the target country for Ukrainian migrants in the Czech Republic and Italy. Our research attempts to answer a number of novel research questions by determining whether some personal attributes could be attached to Ukrainian labor migrants in the EU and their families in Ukraine. Our findings show that migration characteristics of one ethnic group or nation reveal the same patterns regardless of the target country. It appears that remittance behavior of Ukrainian migrants in the Czech Republic and Italy is significantly determined by their financial situation, demographic characteristics, level of human capital and level of integration as well as specific context characteristics. Moreover, our findings provide evidence for the fact that those Ukrainian migrants who are more settled in a target country tend to send fewer or no remittances back to their home country.Članak donosi komparativnu analizu povezanosti osobnih karakteristika migranata i njihova ponašanja pri transferu financijskih sredstava u domovinu. Također ispituje odrednice integracije i potvrđuje hipotezu o prestanku transfera novca ukrajinskih migranata iz Češke Republike i Italije. Naše istraživanje pokušava odgovoriti na brojna nova pitanja utvrđujući postoje li neke posebne značajke ukrajinskih migranata u EU i njihovih obitelji u Ukrajini. Rezultati pokazuju da su migracijske karakteristike etničke grupe ili nacije iste, bez obzira na zemlju migracije. Ponašanje ukrajinskih migranata u Češkoj i Italiji u vezi s transferom novca u domovinu značajno određuje njihova financijska situacija, demografska obilježja, stupanj radnog znanja i vještina te stupanj integracije u novu zemlju kao i specifičnost društvenog konteksta. Štoviše, postoje dokazi da ukrajinski migranti koji su bolje uklopljeni u novu zemlju upućuju manje novčanih transfera u domovinu ili to uopće ne čine

Planning horizon in labour supply of Belarusian small entrepreneurs

Our article focuses on testing the intertemporal substitution hypothesis (ISH) that predicts a positive relationship between hours worked and transitory changes in wages for the owners of Belarusian small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Our results demonstrate that Belarusian entrepreneurs are willing to work a fixed number of hours regardless of their businesses’ performance. Additionally, it appears that females have larger labour supply elasticity than males (it should be noted that male labour supply elasticity becomes even more insignificant when we use robust standard errors). Our results are consistent with the similar findings in USA, Africa, UK and Poland, however, they cannot be generalised for larger companies, since the nature of ISH testing largely depends on the size of the company and its decision-making processes. Our findings suggest that the complicated business environment in Belarus (e.g. difficulties in establishing and running an enterprise, tight bureaucratic control and slow business dynamics) and worsening conditions of the Belarusian economy make small Belarusian entrepreneurs plan their time horizons in a uniquely short-sighted way

Determinants of foreign direct investment in the Visegrad group countries after the EU enlargement

Considering the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in the sustainable development of a country, the main aim of this paper is to identify some macroeconomic factors that positively or negatively influence FDI in Visegrad group countries after the European Union (EU) enlargement in 2004. We employed two types of approaches in our analysis: i) time series and ii) panel data approach. According to the generalized ridge regressions estimated in Bayesian framework, the perceived corruption was a factor that influenced FDI in all the countries. In Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia corruption came through as a serious obstacle for FDIs since 2005, but this was not the case for Hungary. Even if Hungary is perceived as a country with high influence, foreign investors seem no to care about this fact and are more interested in the quality of human resources and the possibility to increase exports. Our panel approach based on a panel ARDL model identified a significant relationship between FDI, corruption index and labour force with advanced education however this causality was only detected in the long run. According to the Granger causality in panel, the attraction of FDI inflows succeeded in generating changes in total tax rate, but the issues related to corruption were not reduced at an acceptable level for foreign investors in Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic