The Role of Financial Constraints in Determining Export Status

In spite of the mounting evidence on the advantages of exporters over firms focused solely on their domestic markets, the source of these differences is yet to be explained. The present contribution analyzes the role of financial constraints as one of the key factors determining firm export status. Through a survey of existing literature and an empirical analysis of Slovenian manufacturing firms the role of financial constraints that limit foreign market access to only a subset of the firms is revealed. It is shown that financial constraints, even when other factors are explicitly considered, determine the firms that will be able to enter into foreign markets and financially constrained firms end up exporting less frequently and smaller quantities than could otherwise be expected

The use of user-generated content for business intelligence in tourism: insights from an analysis of Croatian hotels

Web-based peer review sites are gaining importance in travellers’ decision-making and provide information for destinations’ management. Textual reviews are especially important, but very extensive and hard to process. This article discusses the benefits of recent developments in computational linguistics and shows it can be used, based on a study of 18,000 reviews of Croatian hotels. Results show that numerical evaluation rarely provides sufficient information, while textual reviews reveal details about facilities’ competitive (dis)advantages. Being very extensive, the reviews are difficult to use. By applying computational linguistics the study illustrates how the information can be summarised and used in decision-making. The study extends the application of computational linguistics methodology to tourism literature and provides the first extensive analysis of TripAdvisor data for Croatia

Twitter kao politički alat u zemljama EU-a tijekom ekonomske krize: dubinska komparativna analiza teksta

This paper analyses the use of Twitter among politicians, in particular with regards to whether it was actively used during the economic crisis to promote economic agendas or rather merely to inform people. Forty-three thousand tweets of EU15 governments were collected, analysed using qualitative data analysis (text mining) and computational linguistics, using R statistical packages, and interpreted. The results show that Twitter is used primarily to inform. Only in selected cases was the tool also used to more actively promote economic agendas. This article contributes to the field of political communication by providing, to the best of our knowledge, a broad analytical and comparative overview of Twitter activity for political purposes in Europe using text-mining methods.Rad analizira kako političari rabe Twitter, a osobito je li bio aktivno upotrijebljen tijekom ekonomske krize radi promicanja ekonomskih programa ili pak samo radi informiranja ljudi. Četrdeset i tri tisuće tvitova vlada EU-a iz 15 zemalja prikupljeno je, analizirano i protumačeno kvalitativnom analizom podataka (dubinske analize teksta) i računalnom lingvistikom te uz pomoć R statističkih paketa. Rezultati pokazuju da se Twitter rabi prije svega za informiranje. Samo u odabranim slučajevima taj je alat poslužio i aktivnijem promicanju gospodarskih programa. Članak smatramo doprinosom istraživanju područja političke komunikacije u Europi, jer uz pomoć metoda dubinske analize teksta daje širok analitički i komparativni pregled aktivnosti na Twitteru u političke svrhe

THE ECONOMICS OF THE FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE

The paper analyzes the economic perspectives of dealing with climate change. Recent data shows that concentration of greenhouse gasses significantly increased since industrial revolution, which is causing temperature increases and consequently many unfavourable developments. There are three options to dealing with climate change: (1) do nothing, (2) try to adapt and (3) fight against climate change. Each option is related to some economic costs. The article presents a review of estimates of economic costs related with each option

Good food, clean rooms and friendly staff: Implications of user-generated content for Slovenian skiing, sea and spa hotels’ management

The paper studies user-generated evaluations of hotels in three types of destinations in Slovenia (skiing, sea and spa). Using a broad dataset of user-generated evaluations for 28 different hotels and a combination of text mining and standard statistical methods we show how this data provides rich decision-making information. Although numerical evaluations of different destination types can hardly be directly compared due to different guest structure, the results show that guests in general evaluate in their texts primarily the “basics” (room, food/drink, staff). Using a combination of sentiment and novel aspect-based sentiment, hotels can monitor their competitiveness in time, across different types or brands, and use content analysis to further determine sources of competitive advantages in order to enhance performance. The article is the first comprehensive evaluation of Slovenian tourism using on-line peer reviews and provides a toolkit for similar applied analyses

Labour market reforms in the context of political power theory: The case of Slovenia

The rigidity of labour market has several important negative economic consequences: it stifles job creation, increases discrimination of those that it is actually aimed at protecting (young, women and the low-skilled), hurts the unemployed, slows down economic restructuring and damages its global competitiveness. But reforms are slow and often marked with disputes among partners in the collective bargaining process. Afraid of social security loss, unions usually oppose the reform, while governments usually give in to the union pressures and negative image of reform consequences created by unions and assisted by media. The characteristics of the labour market and labour market reform with respect to bargaining among power groups are examined both theoretically and empirically in the case of Slovenia

UNEMPLOYMENT AND SELF-CONCEPT

The article analyses the position of the unemployed in the labour market, primarily relationship between self-concept and self-esteem of workers and their motivation to seek work. The current crisis dramatically worsened labour market situation, making employment almost impossible for many, primarily the vulnerable groups (older, women). Survey data used in cluster analysis reveal that the unemployment is related to self-concept, but besides unemployment also other factors, primarily age, and sex matter. Also, the reactions of people to unemployment conditional on their self-concept differ

On the Value System as a Precondition for Sustainability: An Overview of Preliminary Survey Results for Slovenia

The Brundtland report (1987) defi ned sustainable development as a form of development which “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’’. Given that the concept of sustainable development closely links the desire for the development of a harmonious society aimed at higher welfare, social cohesion and environmental protection, it requires a shift in values of the society; a shift towards more aware, compashionate, better human. This further requires a shift in consumption and production patterns. We examine the readiness of Slovenian population to support the implementation of more sustainable patterns by examining their values system. The survey based analyis stems from the theoretical concept of happiness, a stream of economics, beginning in the 1970s with the Easterlin paradox. In the article we effectively demonstrate that Slovenian population is in many aspects very traditional. Given that the value system of the general public drives the politicians, this can act as a strong driver towards or against implementation of changes that would support sustainability