The Effect of the Formula Apportionment of the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base on Tax Revenue in the Slovak Republic

Author(s): Nora Grisáková,Štefan Domonkos,Tomáš Domonkos,Miroslava Dolinajcová / Language(s): English Issue: 05/2013

This paper evaluates the impact of the European Commission’s Proposal for a Council directive on the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) (COM(2011) 121/4). We analyze the impact of the apportionment formula to be applied to the CCCTB on the revenues of the Slovak state budget. The sample of our analysis is composed of eleven transnational corporations operating in the Slovak Republic and other EU member states. The results indicate a decrease in tax revenues under the proposed CCCTB system in comparison to the current national tax legislation. By contrast, according to the data available, the likelihood that Slovakia will benefit from the CCCTB system by collecting more taxes seems to be low.

Economic growth in Kosovo and in other countries in terms of globalization of world economy

Author(s): Lumnije Gergjaliu Thaci / Language(s): English Issue: 08/2013

The global financial crisis causes, as among the greatest crises and consequences, reflected the world in continuously increase of unemployment, poverty and inequality. This crisis was reflected in both developed and developing countries including countries in transition. The fact cannot be denied that the effects of financial crisis are even felt in the Republic of Kosovo where during this period of time following consequences could be clearly noted: decrease of the real economy, poverty, reduction in remittances, decrease of external investments, contracting criteria for bank loans and other direct and indirect effects. However, the global economy did continue to recover during 2010 and 2011. Nevertheless, uncertainty regarding to the volatility of global economic recovery in this period is greater than in the previous period. This setting is mainly extracted from instability of financial market due to problems with public finances in several EU member States and entry of protective measures by some rapidly growing economies and developing countries, in response to large capital inflows. It is important to consider the fact that, despite the recent crisis, economic growth model, based on the deepening of EU integration process, in terms of finance, trade, labour markets and institutions, remains as best model for developing countries and Kosovo itself. Special treatment is given to achieved achievements and projections for the following years under policies compiled by the Government of the Republic of Kosovo to enable generic analysis for concrete situation of our national economy. Also, this paper shall explain the underlying factors which will influence on a more accelerated economic development.

Economy & Business: Shameful Economic Secrets Exposed!

Author(s): Barbara Frye / Language(s): English Issue: 01/20/2015

Conflict and sanctions reveal the squishy underbelly of the region’s economies.

Tourism as Solution: Perceived Risks Influencing Participation in Health-Related Tourism

Author(s): Krisztina Priszinger,Péter Mayer / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2010

Health consciousness is one of the most important consumer trends. Health status and everyday stress triggers the need to travel more frequently. The following questions arise: how can health risk factors perceived and consequently, how can the identified factors assign health consciousness and the purchase of health-related tourism products. This paper aims to unfold consumer’s awareness of health risks leading to the consumption of health tourism. Uncertainty before travelling is arising from everyday life, specifying the needs originating (directly) from the lifestyle and (indirectly) from health status. In this paper first we present HWT system and the different health risk factors, as well as Dunn’s push and pull factors theory. Secondly, based on the results of a quantitative research we identify both push and pull factors in the case of Hungarian HWT tourists.

The Role of Personal Values in Determining U.S. Medical Tourists: Expectations and Perceptions of Healthcare Facility Service Quality: An Exploratory

Author(s): Michael Guiry,David G. Vequist / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2010

This exploratory research investigated the relationship between U.S. medical tourists’ personal values and their expectations and perceptions of the service quality of healthcare facilities located outside the U.S. Based on a sample of U.S. consumers, who had traveled abroad for medical care, stepwise regression results indicated that personal values, in particular self-fulfillment, warm relationship with others, sense of accomplishment, security, self-respect, and excitement, significantly predicted U.S. medical tourists’ expectations and perceptions of the service quality of foreign healthcare facilities. The study establishes a foundation for future research on the role of personal values in medical tourists’ evaluation of service quality in the rapidly growing medical tourism industry.

Measurement of Tourism-oriented Aspects of Quality of Life

Author(s): Gábor Michalkó,Tamara Rátz / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2010

A society’s and individuals’ quality of life has long been in the focus of social science research. The subjective aspect of one’s quality of life is usually assessed through a person’s perceived satisfaction with their own life. In comparison, the indicators and methodological approaches used by researchers trying to objectively measure quality of life are more varied and complex. However, both the correct identification of the factors influencing objective quality of life and the longitudinal evaluation of quality of life on the local level have remained a serious challenge. The paper presents the results of an experimental study carried out by the HAS Geographical Research Institute in co-operation with the Kodolányi János University of Applied Sciences that aims to provide deeper understanding of tourism-oriented quality of life in Hungary. Although the research raised a large number of new questions as well, in this paper we discuss the development mechanisms of an indicator system that may fit within the currently used system of social indicators and may provide useful information on the interrelationship of tourism and quality of life. The development of the indicator system includes the delineation of the research area, the creation of the related dimensions and sub-dimensions, and finally the identification of indicators within the sub-dimensions. The indicator system is based on data available at the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, derived from regular data collection methods. Due to the obvious symbiosis of health and quality of life, a special emphasis is put on measuring tourism-oriented quality of life factors at Hungarian health tourism destinations.

Exploring the Jamaican Health Tourism Sector Within a Sustainability Framework

Author(s): Dawn H. Pearcy,Alicia Anderson / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2010

As with many countries, tourism has proven to be a vital source of revenue for the Caribbean Island nation of Jamaica. As a popular vacation destination for tourists seeking sun, sea, and sand, Jamaica has attracted substantial numbers of visitors from around the world over the years. However; emerging forms of tourism present opportunities for Jamaica to enhance its competitive position in the sector. One such form of tourism is health tourism. This study examines the current state of health tourism in Jamaica along with its potential for future growth and related challenges. The paper also examines the key role of sustainability in advancing a successful health tourism sector in Jamaica.

Health Tourism in Romania: Main Features and Trends

Author(s): Mihaela Dinu,Adrian Cioaca,Alexandra Zbuchea / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2010

The Romanian health tourism, based on its exceptional natural resources represents an important segment of the tourism industry. Old tradition of valorization of thermal waters, mineral springs, mofettes curative mud spa treatments are intertwined nowadays with various forms of medical tourism, some practiced for over four decades (the Ana Aslan geriatric treatment) and others being more recent (cosmetic surgery, dental care, eye surgery, etc).The main purpose of this article is to analyze the evolution of medical tourism, especially of spa tourism in Romania, one of the richest countries in Europe in terms of extent and excellence of specific natural resources, with old and unsuitable infrastructure if referred to the public spa facilities, but with modern facilities in wellness and medical private units. The research is both quantitative and qualitative. The first method is based on statistical analysis of data provided by the National Statistics Institute of Romania. The qualitative analysis complements the previous one, which is not extremely detailed and is also not available for a long period of time. The research reveals unequal evolution of the Romanian spa tourism, a severe discrepancy between the quality of specific resources and the existing spa infrastructure, contradictory demand, as well as positive trends for the medium-term future. As a research method we used first of all the qualitative analysis – the available statistical data are rather scarce. The research reveals the lack of investments and the necessity of implementation of a whole host of local plans as part of a new national strategy for tourism industry.

The Reconstruction of “The Salt Road“ - A Means to Develop and Promote the Saline Health Tourism in Transylvania

Author(s): Iulia Cianga,Daniel Costea,Marius-George Oprea,Laura Rodica Giurgiu,Nicolae Cianga / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2010

This paper investigate historical premises of the old salt routes, roads called the ancient or medieval trade route on which the salt was barely transported from the extraction point to the trading one, back then being an extremely valuable trading product. Nowadays these roads have an important role in promoting the saline health resorts in Transylvania developed on the former mining exploitations. The tourist potential and image analysis reveals that both those in desolation and those recently upgraded are lacking a unified promotion that could bring them great profit by raising the number of tourists. We also bring some proposals for these thematic tourist routes.

Foreword

Author(s): Mihaela Dinu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2010

Zadłużenie miast na prawach powiatu i województw w świetle badania ankietowego.

Author(s): Monika Korolewska,Kamilla Marchewka-Bartkowiak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 13/2011

This paper addresses some current issues related to local government debt management in Poland. Using a representative sample of 15 provinces and 54 cities with county rights, the study examines the municipal debt levels under the 2009 government regulations. After presenting the results of the survey the authors briefly analyze the validity and effectiveness of the local debt limits, contributing to the recent discussion regarding central regulation of local government borrowing in Poland. The survey was conducted by the Bureau of Research (BAS) in March 2011.

Horvátország és az EU-integráció: illúzióvesztés és új szemlélet között

Author(s): Velimir Šonje / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 04/2007

Croatians strongly supported accession to NATO and the EU in the 1990s, and as the negotiation process began in 2005, the year 2010 seems a likely date for Croatia’s EU entry. However, the public perception has changed. Scepticism towards integration prevails despite the economic recovery witnessed in this decade, which has been obvious and widely shared by different groups of the population. And although the political elite show a strong pro-European stance, doubts remain among the general population about the costs and benefits of integration. As economic issues recently gained more importance in public debates, a shift in the mood can be partly explained by confusion about the diagnoses and potential cures for six major economic problems. These are: (i) Sluggish export performance and lack of greenfield FDI; (ii) A persistent balance of payments current account deficit and relatively high external debt; (iii) Low competitiveness, and high costs and barriers to doing business; (iv) The distorted view of the role of foreign banks; (v) The lack of fiscal flexibility required for effective anticyclical fiscal policies; (vi) Relatively high unemployment and the perception of high income inequalities.[…]

Szlovénia: az euró első éve

Author(s): Bostjan Vasle,Marijana Bednas / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 04/2007

The well-coordinated economic policies that Slovenia has applied since joining the EU and the ERM II exchange rate mechanism have paved the way for the country to fulfil the conditions for timely adoption of the euro, which has also been the main short-term objective of macroeconomic policies. As explained below, such an approach has enabled a smooth changeover and preserved the main macroeconomic balances of the Slovenian economy in the first year of EMU membership.[...]

OTVARANJE PROSTORA ZA PRIMJENU LATERALNOG MARKETINGA KROZ SEGMENTACIJU TRŽIŠTA

Author(s): Bećir Kalač / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 07/2011

Primećuje se da su na većini razvijenih tržišta, strateške osnove marketinga (segmentacija, targetiranje ili izbor ciljnih grupa i pozicioniranje), kao mehanizam za unapređenje konkurentske prednosti i njeno prevođenje u poslovne mogućnosti i nove proizvode, počele da pokazuju izvesna ograničenja. Kompanije mogu nastaviti sa segmentacijom tržišta na sve sitnije delove ali na kraju, rezultat su tržišta previše mala da bi bila profitabilna. Zato je danas potreban novi način razmišljanja o tome kako osmisliti efikasnu tržišnu ponudu. Stiglo se do prelomne tačke kada je marketingu bio potreban novi okvir za razvoj ideja.

ASSESSMENT OF THE BALANCED SCORECARD SYSTEM FUNCTIONALITY IN SLOVAK COMPANIES

Author(s): Adriana Csikósová,Mária Antošová,Bohuslava Mihalčová / Language(s): English Issue: 27/2014

Slovak companies record conflicting responses regarding the use of the balanced scorecard (BSC) system in practice. Apart from information on positive results there are reports referring to negative experiences, documenting the insufficient contribution of the BSC system. The starting point of the research described in this paper is based on the assumption that the BSC is not meeting the management expectations to the required level it was implemented into practice, yielding limited contribution, or reduced functionality. The results presented were aimed to verify the functionality or disfunctionality of the BSC system and identify its degree in those Slovak companies businesses where the methodology has been applied.

THE EFFECT OF OIL PRICES ON RESIONAL PORTFOLIOS OF KOREAN SMAL AND MEDIUM ENTREPRISE: FEATURES ON REGION, SUB-PERIOD, AND MEASUREMENT TYPE OF OIL PRIC

Author(s): Sunghee Choi / Language(s): English Issue: 27/2014

By making use of the newly constructed regional portfolios of Korean SMEs, this paper examines the effect of oil price changes on these portfolios returns. The results from the multifactor market model are as follows: (1) the portfolios classified in the capital area (Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi-do-do) are less likely to be significantly exposed to oil price changes rather than others in non-capital area; (2) portfolios are more likely to be significantly exposed to oil prices changes when oil price changes are sizable; (3)portfolios are more likely to be significantly exposed to the type of oil price changes measured by the ‘random-walk’ assumption rather than by the ‘GARCH (1,1)’ process. These results suggest informative features on oil price exposures of Korean SMEs.

VALUE-CHAIN MODELING IN E-COMMERCE SYSTEMS

Author(s): Petr Suchánek,Dominik Vymetal / Language(s): English Issue: 27/2014

Currently, e-business and e-commerce systems became standard tools in the business environment. As we can see in practice and literature, current trend in e-business and e-commerce, is to develop systems enabled to manage and coordinate (and help the managers to manage) the business and production operations. Companies' managers increasingly need new methods and tools that can help them in their decision-making. In general, managements can make right decisions only in case they have current and adequate information. In addition, managers have to get all information in time, and decision-making processes should be realized quickly and under the strong thumb of a competitive environment. It also applies in the context of management of e-business and e-commerce systems. One of basic features of efficient e-commerce is correct definitions and descriptions of all internal and external processes of the supplier. All of them are targeted to customers´ needs and requirements. The optimal and most exact way how to obtain and find optimal solution of e-commerce system and its process structure is modeling and simulation. Contrarily to most approaches using process-oriented modeling, this paper presents the value-chain-oriented modeling approach. Value chain model and its transformation into control loop is shortly presented as a base for simulation. The closing discussion outlines next research directions. The aim of this paper is to outline value chain approach to modeling in e-commerce systems. First, we present an e-commerce system as a subject of our research. Next the role of modeling at the design level and its’ role in the decision support is discussed. After that, we shortly characterize the two main business modeling perspectives, namely the process-oriented and value-chain-oriented approach. Section 4 deals with an outline of generic e-commerce model based on value chain modeling. The last sections include simulation model, model results, and closing remarks.

AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORGANISATIONAL STRATEGY AND TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN MANUFACTURING UNITS IN TAMIL NADU

Author(s): Alamelu RAMACHANDRAN,Selvabaskar SIVASANKARA GANDHI,Sivasundaram Anushan CHANDRASEKARAN / Language(s): English Issue: 27/2014

The major aim of the study is to identify the factors related to the implementation of Quality Management practices in manufacturing units from organization perspective, based on an empirical analysis and to identify the relationship between TQM implementation and organizational strategy. This study is limited to small manufacturing units registered with confederation of Indian Industries in Tamil Nadu. The instrument used in this study is a survey questionnaire. The samples of 110 units are selected for the study. The study implies that the presence of people involvement based organization strategy influenced the successful implementation of TQM and its success depends on the dimensions of top management involvement and organization culture which resulted in higher organizational performance. This encourages managers to accompany their TQM practices with the infusion and reinforcement of employee empowerment, shared vision, and style of an organization.

DOES MALAYSIAN GOLD BULLION COIN PRICES FOLLOW MEAN REVERSION OR RANDOM WALK?

Author(s): Qaiser MUNIR,Sook Ching KOK / Language(s): English Issue: 27/2014

Mainly past studies used security prices to test the random walk theory. Not much attention is given to gold bullion coin prices. Furthermore, past literature emphasised on the developed countries’ markets to test the random walk theory for gold prices. However, the evidence for developing countries’ markets is lacking. In addition to this, several important events happened in the past decade seem to have affected the gold prices. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to test for the presence of a random walk in the series of Malaysian gold bullion coin (1oz) daily prices, ranging from July 18th 2001 to May 11th 2012, by incorporating the structural break in the series. Past studies on testing the random walk theory of gold prices used tradition unit root tests without incorporating structural breaks. In contrast, this study applies Zivot and Andrews (1992) one-break and Lumsdaine and Papell (1997) two-break unit root tests. Furthermore, we also provided the empirical evidences based on traditional unit root tests to compare the results with the prior studies on this topic. The main finding is that Malaysian gold bullion coin prices follow mean reversion, implying that the market is inefficient and the impact of shocks is transitory. We also capture important break dates in the series. The finding has implications for econometric modelling, in particular forecasting and structural breaks. The structural breaks captured in the series reflect that investors are responsive to market sentiment. Furthermore, as our empirical results show mean reversion, therefore, investors can exploit past price trend to get abnormal profit. This paper adds to the literature on random walk theory of gold prices, by providing the evidence on Malaysian gold bullion coin prices. In our knowledge, no previous research tested the random walk theory of gold prices on Malaysia, by using structural break unit root tests.

WELLBEING AND INTERNAL MIGRATION IN ITALY: AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS

Author(s): Giulio Guarini,Marco Biagetti / Language(s): English Issue: 27/2014

We apply a double panel data econometric analysis (a static regional, for the period 1995-2011, and a provincial dynamic panel, for the period 2005-2011) for Italy, in order to evaluate which wellbeing factors can cause internal migration, by pointing out the relevance of subjective factors and economic variables. For what concerns social variables, we verify the Tiebout’s hypothesis, according to which migration depends on the satisfaction of provision of public goods; furthermore, we consider the relevance of social cohesion in the migration process, according to the EU Regional Policies framework. As for the economic variables, we follow the Harrod-Todaro approach, according to which individuals migrate to improve their economic wellbeing related to labour market conditions. Our results find that pull factors of internal migration are the high level of income per capita and the good perception of the quality of local services, while push factors of internal migration are the high perception of social insecurity and the huge level of unemployment with the latter increasing its influence during the crisis.