The main goal of this contribution is to assess the development of the economic condition of the Slovak Republic in the context of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation regarding the development of and changes in the economic condition of Slovakia is compared with that in selected EU countries, considering the effects of previous global crises, with a focus on the impacts on small and medium-sized enterprises. The economies of European countries are mentioned to illustrate the ideas of the presented paper, with an emphasis on the economic dimension of the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent impact on the Slovak Republic. This research is conducted through basic analytical tools and an analysis of the development of macroeconomic indicators, and by addressing the issue through data from a globally available database. The results in this paper serve as proposals and recommendations for the mitigation of negative economic impacts.

The paper deals with the analysis of living standards in the context of economic performance of OECD countries. The main goal of this work is to provide an analysis of living standards in selected OECD countries for the period 2005 to 2019. We analyze the impact of GDP growth on the development of indicators measuring living standards. The third part of the work deals with proposals to improve the living standards and economy of the specific countries. In the work, we analyzed three indices measuring the standard of living, the human development index, the health care index and the global happiness index. We compared the development of the indices with the development of GDP in selected countries by statistical evaluation through the Pearson correlation coefficient. The economies of the V4 and Scandinavian countries grew during the period under review. The performance of the Scandinavian economies is at a much higher level than that of the V4 economies. The results can be used to provide suggestions and measures to improve the standard of living in the countries concerned, as well as for futher research of indicators, influecing development of the analyzed indexes.