The Eastern enlargements of the European Union (EU) since the early 2000s have included post-transitional economies at a lower level of development than the existing member states and thus, have significantly affected the East-West migration flows and labour markets on both sides. This has provided a distinctive opportunity to study the effects of liberalisation and to identify economic factors leading to migration flows with the purpose of enabling better estimations of future migration trends. In this research, a panel data analysis with pair of country fixed effects and time fixed effects is used to explore several pull and push factors of the East-West EU migration flows in the period from 2000 to 2017. Results indicate that emigration rate responds rather quickly to the changes in GDP per capita and unemployment rate of the youth population in immigration country, with statistically significant elasticity coefficients, suggesting that international migration contributes significantly to adjusting the labour supply to fluctuations in economic activity.

Background: Foreign direct investment (FDI) flows are unevenly distributed around the world and determined by different factors. The literature points out to economic and non-economic determinants of FDI flows, while the latter have shown to generate ambiguous effects across regions. Objectives: The primary goal of this paper is to examine the relationship between non-economic determinants and the FDI inflow in Croatia from 1996 to 2017, thus capturing different periods of the economic cycle. The importance of non-economic institutional determinants of FDI is analysed in parallel with the economic determinants. Methods/Approach: This study uses available data on FDI per capita and a set of non-economic (institutional) and economic determinants. We employed the OLS regression analysis to determine the significance of FDI inflow determinants and compare the relevance of non-economic to economic factors. Results: Results of this exploratory study show that institutional quality variables included in the model (regulatory quality, political stability, and government effectiveness, the rule of law and control of corruption) could not be pointed out as important determinants of the FDI inflow in Croatia. Economic variables GDP per capita and average gross wage prove to be important in determining the FDI inflow in Croatia. Conclusions: The research results point to a variety of FDI determinants among countries and economic cycle periods. Given the evidence from Croatia, variations, especially in institutional determinants, might be caused by the diverse FDI inflow characteristics and specificities of receiving economies.

This paper examines the validity of the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) theory, using 12 different single-product baskets of Apple devices. Given the presented advantages of Apple indices as PPP measurement in comparison to the most...

This paper studies the determinants of the intentions to emigrate and conditional on migration aspirations, the destination choice in a number of Central East and Southeast European economies (CESEE). Using data from the OeNB Euro Survey, we apply a two‐stage Heckman procedure to identify the drivers of migration intentions – specifically individuals' demographic and household attributes, financial conditions, past economic experiences, and future expectations. In the second stage, conditional on the stated intention to migrate, we examine the determinants of destination choice, distinguishing between EU15, EU‐CEE, and extra‐EU countries. This micro‐level evidence indicates that economic and financial conditions (past, present, and expected) play an important role in shaping migration intentions, while non‐economic factors, including individual demographic and family attributes, as well as network ties, also exert important influence. Destination preferences, conditional on an already existing intention to migrate are not simply a mechanical extension of intention determinants. The choice of the destination region is determined mostly by marital status, educational attainment, and GDP per capita variables in the origin and destination region. This reflects the conceptualisation of migration as a two‐stage decision process, distinguishing between entry into the pool of potential migrants and destination choice within that pool. This stage‐specific perspective thus allows to differentiate determinants of intentions and destination choice of prospective mobility, that empirical results based on actual migration decisions cannot deliver.