INDUSTRIAL ENLARGEMENT AND COMPETITIVENESS INDEX

Over the last decade Slovenia has achieved clear and positive macro-economic results that have placed it among the most sucessful transitions countries. The basic indicators show that it has been integrating and catching up with European Union member states at an ever increasing pace. Despite this, the challenges of a global economy-where only innovation and entrepreneurship can compete succesfully, and the relative lag in the competitive capacity of our economy behind numerous other countries in the world rankings, require drastic changes to be made to Slovenia’s economic structure to adopt as much as possible to the demans of the knowledge based economy. That means the transformation from an economy with low added value whose competitiveness is based on low operative costs into an economy based on production and service activities whose competitive advantages are high added value, quality, innovation and entrapreneurship. Entrepreneurship and the diffusion of innovation, which considerably increase the speed at which new high-quality and low cost products replace existing products, are two driving forces of the knowledge based economy and they are changing the economic structure of leading countries....national competitiveness, benchmarking, development strategy, industrial policy

Competitiveness Evaluation of Slovenian Economy

Evaluation of competitiveness became an important instrument for balancing the development process of the economy. For Slovenia it is important tool for policy creation. Benchmarking with more developed countries shows us the right directions of development process. Competitiveness can be analysed from different sides. Existed studies have focused on several different analytical levels: product, firm, industry cluster, region and nation. The most successful economies are raising the skill content of their labour force. By reducing transportation and communication costs, it links economies and societies into closer, tighter webs. It facilitates the integration of production under common ownership (transnational companies), allowing access to capital flows, world markets, skills, and technology. Competitiveness evaluation of Slovenian economy shows us that the problems remain the same during the enlargement process of the European Union. Competitiveness is defined as the quality of the economic and institutional environment for the sustainable development of private productive activities and the increise in productivity. Today we focuse more on policies and strategies on institutional and also on business level that mainatain the long-term competitiveness. Competitiveness can be seen as the collection of factors, policies and institutions which determine the level of productivity of a country and that, therefore, determine the level of prosperity that can be attained by an economy. In the paper I will evaluate the Slovenian competitiveness by SWOT analysis. After European enlargement we can see that some CEE countries have benefited more than other countries. Slovenia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia have increased the locational attractiveness for business sector and also improved the institutional competitiveness. Harmonization with EU legislation and adoption of “Acquis Communautaire” have improved the institutions and the legal system. On the other side, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria have problems connected with the enlargement process. Because these latter countries stayed outside the first enlargement process, they have, in addition to their originally less competitive, position lower competitiveness possibilities. The integration process increased the possibilities for benchmarking. Today is more common to benchmark different countries and compare the main determinants of competitiveness. Evaluation of competitiveness is an important tool for economic policy. Slovenia as a small country can be analysed from the view of regional competitiveness. Improving competitiveness is not about driving down living standards. It is about creating a high skills, high productivity and therefore high wage economy where enterprise can flourish and where we can find opportunities rather than threats in changes we cannot avoid. Many governments seriously peruse national competitiveness rankings produced by WEF or IMD. The study of competitiveness strategy is now a very important obligation of government. All new member countries have high-level official committees to deal with competitiveness, reaching across ministerial divisions to devise international, national or regional policy.productivity and competitiveness; benchmarking; development strategy; national development

Implementing Privacy Policy: Who Should Do What?

Academic scholarship on privacy has focused on the substantive rules and policies governing the protection of personal data. An extensive literature has debated alternative approaches for defining how private and public institutions can collect and use information about individuals. But, the attention given to the what of U.S. privacy regulation has overshadowed consideration of how and by whom privacy policy should be formulated and implemented. U.S. privacy policy is an amalgam of activity by a myriad of federal, state, and local government agencies. But, the quality of substantive privacy law depends greatly on which agency or agencies are running the show. Unfortunately, such implementation-related matters have been discounted or ignored— with the clear implication that they only need to be addressed after the “real” work of developing substantive privacy rules is completed. As things stand, the development and implementation of U.S. privacy policy is compromised by the murky allocation of responsibilities and authority among federal, state, and local governmental entities—compounded by the inevitable tensions associated with the large number of entities that are active in this regulatory space. These deficiencies have had major adverse consequences, both domestically and internationally. Without substantial upgrades of institutions and infrastructure, privacy law and policy will continue to fall short of what it could (and should) achieve

Lifecycles of Competition Systems: Explaining Variation in the Implementation of New Regimes

The aim of the study was to investigate the crimes and punishments that were commonly occurring between the years 1601-1651, and how the distribution was between men and women represented in the court in district Sjuhundra and Njurunda district. To answer these questions, a quantitative examination of court records conducted in which the crimes and punishments have been categorized. The results that have emerged have been the basis for the conclusions issued in the essay. The results showed that the most common target types were various civil and propertycase and the most common punishments were sentenced to fines and settlements. It was predominantly men who were in the court, the proportion of women was between 13-22%. The conclusion is that men were increasingly confronted with the court than the women and the crimes and punishments in comparison to the two districts were relatively equal

The Importance of Apple attributes: A Comparison of Self-explicated and Conjoint Analysis Results

the goal of this article was to determine the importance of apple attributes using two research techniques – self-explicated procedure and conjoint analysis. Research was conducted on a sample of 426 consumers of apples in Zagreb, Croatia. The results of self-explicated and conjoint analysis procedures revealed differences in ranking of apple attributes regarding their importance. It is demonstrated that conjoint analysis gives more detailed results and that it is not influenced by respondents’ tendency to give socially acceptable answers. The results of conjoint analysis also give more information for the producers of apples who can use them to create a product that matches consumers’ wishes.apple, conjoint analysis, self-explicated method, Demand and Price Analysis,

Antitrust Policy: A Century of Economic and Legal Thinking

Passage of the Sherman Act in the United States in 1890 set the stage for a century of jurisprudence regarding monopoly, cartels, and oligopoly. Among American statutes that regulate commerce, the Sherman Act is unequaled in its generality. The Act outlawed "every contract, combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade" and "monopolization" and treated violations as crimes. By these open-ended commands, Congress gave federal judges extraordinary power to draw lines between acceptable cooperation and illegal collusion, between vigorous competition and unlawful monopolization. By enlisting the courts to elaborate the Sherman Act' s broad commands, Congress gave economists a singular opportunity to shape competition policy. Because the statute' s vital terms directly implicated economic concepts, their interpretation inevitably would invite contributions from economists. What emerged is a convergence of economics and law without parallel in public oversight of business. As economic learning changed, the contours of antitrust doctrine and enforcement policy eventually would shift, as well. This article follows the evolution of thinking about competition since 1890 as reflected by major antitrust decisions and research in industrial organization. We divide the U.S. antitrust experience into five periods and discuss each period' s legal trends and economic thinking in three core areas of antitrust: cartels, cooperation, or other interactions among independent firms; abusive conduct by dominant firms; and mergers.