Suchergebnisse

At the beginning of 2020, the Strategy of the Republic of Croatia until 2030 with an outlook to 2050 was adopted. The Strategy analyzes two energy transition scenarios, the accelerated energy transition and the moderate energy transition. The Strategy is guided and defined by goals set out by the European Union (EU), which primarily states to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and increase the share of renewable energy sources. In order to reach these goals, it is necessary to substitute fossil fuel capacities with new capacities for the production of electricity from renewable sources. In order to do so, a new wave of investments is needed. The Strategy does not detail the macroeconomic effects of investments in renewable sources on the Croatian economy, generally quantified through GDP growth and employment. This paper analyzes the macroeconomic effects of announced investments in renewable energy sources for electricity production. The analysis encompasses the time period 2021–2030. The effects are quantified using the input–output tables for Croatia. The analysis exhibits relatively modest macroeconomic effects of investments into renewable energy on the Croatian economy. The paper concludes that it is necessary to change the structure and dynamics of investment in renewable energy. First, the investment should go into sources with the highest domestic component in investments and at the same time develop production capacities in technologies and equipment production for wind and solar capacities.

World energy security is sensitive to stable energy environment and geopolitics that depend on inter-regional energy trade strategies. However, this study uses the network connectedness measures of Diebold-Yilmaz to find the trade cooperation/competition preference for non-renewables' security development. To this end, the dynamic asymmetries of weighted spillover effects of natural gas and crude oil trade flow components are analyzed throughout world trade networks before- and after the sharp fall in crude oil prices. The results exhibit that natural gas and crude oil trade networks experience asymmetric- and time-varying behavior in response to transitory- vs. permanent components as well as positive- vs. negative shocks pre-and post- sharp fall in crude oil prices. Specifically, the natural gas and crude oil trade networks show a lesser degree of integration after 2014. Moreover, the natural gas trade network represents more (less) weighted sensitivity to short-term fluctuations (long-term trend) than the crude oil trade network pre-and post- 2014. As the other comparative result, a higher (lower) degree of integration is detected in the crude oil trade network in response to the positive (negative) shocks compared to the natural gas trade network pre-and post- 2014. Therefore, a lower level of cooperation preference among regions is proposed in the natural gas and crude oil trade networks in response to a sharp fall in crude oil prices. Also, decisions about energy conservation, environmental protection, and protection of strategic resources can affect a region's natural gas and crude oil supply and demand security.

On December 29, 2016, the Croatian Parliament has bestowed upon our esteemed emeritus professor of economics Soumitra Sharma, the highest State Prize for Life Time Achievement in Social Sciences (2015). Professor Sharma has been one-time teacher of many of us and the founding Editor-in-Chief of ZIREB. Accordingly, as a tribute, I have thought it appropriate and worthwhile to evaluate and present to the readers his lifetime achievement in economics.

Environmental policies are becoming an important part of agricultural policy portfolio in the EU, which is binding on Croatia. This paper seeks to evaluate potential sectoral effects of several nitrogen pollution reduction policy measures within CGE model for Croatia. Finding appropriate agri-environmental policy design represents a typical optimization problem. Thus, the paper attempts to find potential agri-environmental measures which comply with supranational directives without jeopardizing other economic policy goals. Results show that polluter-pays principlebased measures, if not accompanied by the provider-gets principle measures, could have relatively large negative economy-wide effects in Croatia. However, these effects can be reduced by the appropriate policy mix.

Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) became the most popular composite indicator within the EU with the purpose of monitoring and/or forecasting business cycles in one country or for a region as a whole. Since it is calculated regularly, on a monthly base, and is based on five distinct confidence indicators, the main concern is whether the ESI can be explained and/or can explain the current, past or future values of relevant macroeconomic variables. This implies its relevance in predicting both short- and long-term economic outcomes of, for example, variation in income, unemployment fluctuations, consumption change, inflation modifications, sectoral alterations and etc. The question that arises often in academic, as well as within the EU decision-making circles is whether the ESI be used as an explanatory variable with valuable information for modelling the national output developments. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to reveal the true strength and significance in the ESI-GDP nexus for the EU. Empirical research is based on panel cointegration analysis that utilizes data on the ESI and GDP over the period 2000-2018 for the EU28 countries. The causal relationship between the variables appears to be consistent in the short- and long-run across the panel, suggesting that ESI movements do explain movements in national output, hence can help both private and public sector decision-makers to evaluate their goals and plan their actions.