This paper studies the relevance of political stability on foreign direct investment (FDI) and the relevance of FDI on economic growth, in three panels. The first panel contains 11 very small economies; the second contains five well-developed and politically stable economies with highly positive FDI net inflows, while the third is a panel with economies that are prone to political violence or targeted by the terrorist attacks. We employ a Granger causality test and implement a vector autoregressive (VAR) framework within the panel setting. In order to test the sensitivity of the results and avoid robust errors, we employ an ARDL model for each of the countries within every panel. Based upon our results, we conclude that there is a long-term relationship between political stability and FDI for the panel of small economies, while we find no empiric evidence of such a relationship for both panels of larger and more developed economies. Similarly to the original hypothesis of ^Lucas (¹⁹⁹⁰), we find that FDI outflows tend to go towards politically less stable countries. On the other hand, the empiric methodology employed did not find such conclusive evidence in the panels of politically more developed countries or in the small economies that this paper observes.

Background: General concept of motivation, which include the motivational techniques and human resources management as a prerequisite for the most important intangible asset is related to the company performance. Objectives: we build on the conceptual model examining the respondents’ attitudes about the influence of various parameters on better business performance and work atmosphere. In addition, we also examine the attitudes towards the impact of motivation, company management, and communication on employee satisfaction. Methods/Approach: Difference in the perception of essential parameters such as motivation, communication, leadership model, and personnel management within a company, over groups of respondents differentiated by gender and age is tested using Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Results: The results obtained by this research conducted from an employee point of view, detect the difference in the perception of the parameters of motivation, communication, leadership and personnel management, and their impact on employee satisfaction. Conclusions: Our empirical research results clearly pinpoint the link between successful application of motivational techniques, quality of the leadership and employee satisfaction.

The paper studies the influence of states' dependence on the exploitation and export of non-renewable natural resources on the development of conflicts, the so-called resource conflicts. Various authors describe the term “geopolitical economy” in a number of different ways. A major distinction between their views pertains to the role and the importance that the state has in the international political economy and also at the global level. However, drawing mainly on R. Desai's thesis that the modern world is predominantly characterized by uneven and combined development and that states have the dominant role in it (states dominate the political economy on the domestic level and the geopolitical economy on the international level), different types of conflicts will be compared and put into different “geopolitical economies.” The main research thesis is that resource conflicts can be described as geoeconomic-geopolitical conflicts, and these conflicts evolve as outcomes of the geopolitical economy.

The Three Seas (Baltic-Adriatic-Black) Initiative was originally rationalised as a geopolitical alliance of NATO/EU member states of “New Europe”, from Estonia to Croatia, connecting the Baltic and Adriatic Seas. The member states,...

The problem of the relevance of human and natural capital, as well as the potential adverse effect of natural capital on economic growth, has gained increased attention in development economics. The aim of this paper is to assess, theoretically and empirically, the relevance of several forms of capital on economic growth in certain small economies that are dependent upon tourism or natural resources. The empirical framework is based on Impulse Response Functions obtained from Vector Autoregressive models in which we focus on the model where economic growth is the dependent variable for ten small economies that are dependent upon either tourism or natural resources. We find that there is evidence of the “natural resource curse”, especially in the economies that have a strong dependence on resources that are easily substitutable and whose prices constantly fluctuate. We further find that in the majority of observed cases, the type of capital these small economies are most dependent on for their economic growth causes negative impulses in the majority of the observed periods. Therefore, the main policy recommendation should be to assure that even these small economies should strive towards further diversification and avoid dependence on only one segment of their economy.