The international financial crisis: Theoretical debates, economic policies, and lessons

The global financial crisis has had a strong impact on most European countries. While at first the massive injection of resources helped the financial system not to collapse, the austerity policies implemented throughout the continent have not brought the expected economic growth. Interestingly, the type of intervention undertaken is rooted in the neoclassical tradition, which entails a specific understanding of the functioning of the financial system and the economy. In this context, the objectives of this paper are firstly, to analyze the main theoretical assumptions and the specific way in which the crisis is understood and the applied economic policies are developed under this tradition; and secondly, to account for the social and economic impact of the policies applied, and the different margins of action that each European country still has

When small-sized and non-innovating firms meet a crisis: evidences from the Italian labor market

The Italian jobs crisis consists of a high percentage of non-working labour force, matched with a high percentage of discouraged, long-term unemployed and inactive population. Not only a sharp deregulation of the job market is groundless, but even a hypothetic return to expansionary fiscal policy would be insufficient in order to solve such structural problems. Starting from the literature dealing with the “Italian decline”, this article demonstrates that the current problems of the Italian labour market are strictly connected to both (post-crisis) fiscal adjustment and pre-existing features of the industrial branc

Posebnosti metalurške industrije za implementaciju Lean principa

The ideal balance between innovating and effective financing is provided by the Lean principles. The basic principle of Lean is to eliminate the wastes and to increase the effi ciency of production processes. The objective of this article is to define the basic specifics of metallurgical production, to analyze the classical sources of wastes (Ohno’s seven wastes) from the point of view of the identified specifics and to propose the priorities for their elimination in metallurgical production.Idealnu ravnotežu između inovacije I djelotvornog financiranja osigurava se Lean principima. Osnovni princip Lean-a je kako smanjiti gubitke i kako povećati učinkovitost proizvodnih procesa. Cilj ovog članka je definirati osnovne specifičnosti metalurške proizvodnje kako bi analizirali klasične izvore gubitaka (Ohnovih sedam gubitaka) i to s točke gledišta identificiranih specifičnosti i predložiti prioritete za otklanjanje gubitaka u metalurškoj proizvodnji