The paper presents a signalling exercise with a view to trace emerging dynamics in the development of the service economy in Europe. These dynamics have a direct influence and will trigger off service innovation. Firstly, the drivers of the service economy are presented, many of them fostering service innovation as a way to face new societal and business challenges. Secondly, emerging developments are discussed to identify the most promising service innovation dynamics. Finally, foresight scenarios demonstrate possible future trends of the new service economy. These scenarios are based on a methodology developed and applied in the context of an EC-funded project on Sectoral Innovation Systems. This exercise is performed for the overall set of services activities although a particular focus is given on activities such as knowledge intensive business services and distributive trade services. Results indicate that emerging developments are those related to the reconciliation between industrialisation and customisation associated with ICT, ageing population, sustainable development and service regression and extension dynamics. The cases of knowledge intensive services and distributive trades have shown how different drivers and emerging developments are interrelated and establish different scenarios for future development.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32783709
The purpose of this article is to analyse collaboration in the process of post-conflict reconstruction in Kosovo. Based on extensive empirical research, we focus on the parliamentarisation in Kosovo in the context of a multi-stakeholder partnership (MSP). We investigate the creation, operation and effects of co-operation within an MSP called the Kosovo Assembly Support Initiative (ASI). This MSP is relevant for the study of parliamentary affairs because of its goals to help in the creation of a functioning national parliament, but also because several other national parliaments contributed to this goal within the broader post-conflict peace-building in Kosovo.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33025629
Foreign acquisitions are an increasingly important mode of FDI in the new EU member states (NMS). Using firm-level data and a common estimation framework for seven NMS we study pre- and post-acquisition performance of acquired firms. This paper, to the best of our knowledge, represents the first comprehensive study of the pre- and post-acquisition performance of foreign-acquired firms in NMS. Distinguishing between the impact of target selection and post-acquisition improvements on performance, we find that, on average, foreign investors are targeting 'lemons' with growth potential rather than 'picking cherries'. Regardless of targeting 'cherries' or 'lemons', performance of acquired firms improved after the acquisition, whereby the boost in productivity is not achieved by reducing employment but mostly by increased efficiency in the use of production factors especially labor.
COBISS.SI-ID: 512378236
Performance of the public sector is at the core of long-term wealth creation and welfare improvement. Yet, its measurement remains inadequate and flawed with data deficiency. The paper proposes an extended framework for the assessment of public services performance that accounts for long-term impacts on welfare and empirically evaluates it across 25 European countries on the basis of a wide set of proxy indicators. We relate the performance scores to input costs indices and propose a coherent typology of countries that correspond to the patterns of economic effectiveness of public services. The empirical analysis reveals that due to differences in input costs across the enlarged EU the economic effectiveness of public services varies to a much larger extent than the performance, with some relatively large-size governments (Sweden, Denmark, Austria) being the most effective ones.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33243741
This paper adds to understanding differences in trading performance between manufacturing and services firms by using unique firm-level data across four EU member countries. We find an overall pattern across four countries that services firms are relatively less engaged in trade than manufacturing firms, they mostly trade in goods and they are more likely to import than to export. Trade in services is quite rare; services are more likely to be traded by firms already trading goods . The complexity of trade activities is increasing in firm size and productivity. Two-way traders outperform one-way traders. Changes in trading status by either adding another dimension of trade (imports, exports) or another type of product (goods, services) are infrequent and are associated with significant pre-switching premia in terms of productivity, size and wages. In contrast, learning effects from switching trading status are uncommon. This evidence points to significant fixed cost of being engaged in trade and confirms some previous findings that services firms seem to have similar traits to manufacturing firms when it comes to trade performance. Finally, apart from the larger trade participation in smaller countries, we do not observe any other systematic differences in terms of trade premia or switching premia between the four countries that could be attributed to the differences in country characteristics.
COBISS.SI-ID: 22962406