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The common denominator of the European Union's (EU) strategic long-run documents is the role of total factor productivity in fostering future growth and competitiveness. Hence, this article analyses the impact of total factor productivity on export competitiveness in EU new member states (NMS). As opposed to the stagnation of the growth of total factor productivity in the advanced economies, EU NMS exhibited stronger growth that was interrupted due to the 2008 economic and financial crisis. After the crisis, the growth continued but it was not as strong as before. The results of the empirical analysis confirm the vital role of total factor productivity for the export competitiveness of the EU NMS. However, the results also point to the fact that the impact of total factor productivity on export competitiveness is not that beneficial in the countries where the value of total factor productivity has not returned to the pre-crisis level.

During and after the sovereign debt crisis that hit most of the EU member states after the Great Recession, the question of the effectiveness of fiscal policy vis-à-vis ensuring sustainable growth rates and changing the economic structure of member states was highly debated. Accordingly, this paper investigates the effects of shocks in government purchases and net taxes on the export competitiveness of the eleven new EU member states: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia. The countries are treated as a homogenous sample, but the empirical analysis extends beyond this. Namely, the paper examines two subsamples based on the exchange rate regimes of the eleven new EU member states: the fixed vs the flexible exchange rate regime. By applying the panel VAR analysis, over the 1999-2015 period, we have reached the following conclusions. First, fiscal austerity influences the level of exports in our sample. Second, the effects of shocks in fiscal policy on the level of exports are short-lived. Third, shocks in government purchases are the most important determinant for all the new EU member states. And fourth, shocks in net taxes influence the level of export only in the countries that have the flexible exchange rate regimes. Our results contribute to the literature that examines the effects of fiscal policy on the competitiveness of national economies by highlighting both the duration effect of fiscal policy on the level of export and also by pointing to the optimal economic instrument used with respect to the currency arrangement of the country.

The paper investigates the relationship between Croatian local government budget outturns (i.e., fiscal success) and a chosen set of economic and non-economic determinants. The determinants are divided into four groups: (i) economic, (ii) political, (iii) transparency and (iv) socio-historical. Three main goals are set in the paper. The first is to determine whether there are differences in fiscal success at the different levels of administrative governance (counties, cities and municipalities) in Croatia. Subsequently, the second goal is determining whether such differences are of an economic or non-economic origin and third, whether such differences are robust, meaning do they persist at all three administrative levels. If the differences are not persistent, the question remains as towards what determinants (economic or non-economic) do they diverge. The analysis is conducted on the entire population, i.e. 428 municipalities, 128 cities and 20 counties for the period 2012–2014. Panel data and regression analysis are applied to study the differences and signs of independent variables. The obtained results indicate that differences between local government units in Croatia stem are of an economic and political origin.

Due to negotiations on accession to the EU, the new EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe went through the financial opening. In the pre-crisis period followed by high liquidity in global markets, most of the EU new member states experienced rapid credit growth, which conditioned the appreciation of the exchange rate. External imbalances and vulnerabilities built up. Countries experienced deterioration in their current accounts. This paper investigates the link between financial openness, real effective exchange rate, financial crisis and current account balance within the Panel Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) framework for 11 new European Union members during the period from 1999 to 2016. The results obtained by the use of pooled mean group estimator (PMG) show that in the long run, financial openness has a significant negative impact on the current account balance. In the short run, crisis significantly influences the current account balance having a positive sign.