Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

This article demonstrates how Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan change regional security dynamic in South Asia. The formation of regions, intensification and importance of regional power is interesting for different kind of scientists, including political analysts, due to the changing values of national nations in a global world and due to the power separation between members of international system. Regional nations, which are analyzed, are one of the most rapidly growing markets, what is more, a lot of important changes in politics, which give the world a tumble of particular tendencies, happens in these countries. All things considered, it is important to get information about processes which happens in Southern Asia, especially, in India which is a regional power. The article analyzes how regional security system in South Asia. Analysis of regional security dynamic in India-Pakistan conflict demonstrates how organization serves the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of transactions among states, but the ambiguity in them also functions as a tool to manage distribution of power.

This study examines the impact of 2008 financial crisis on firms’ productivity in Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania by using the World Bank’s Enterprise Financial Crisis Survey data. The Work Bank carried out the survey to have a short, quick, and cost-efficient evaluation of the effect of the 2008 global financial crisis on companies in European and Central Asian countries. We find that different firm-specific variables affect the firm’s productivity in Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. Firms benefited from huge market potential and this location proximity to capital city can improve the chance of being less affected from the crisis only in Latvia. On the contrary to the findings for Latvia, the capital city variables are not statistically significant for firms in Lithuania and Romania. Working capital financing matters for firms in Latvia and Lithuania while short-term leverage is important for firms in Lithuania and Romania. More interestingly, we observe that R&D expenses may not able to improve firms’ performance at the time of financial crisis.

As an alternative to the conventional GDP, a new “progressive” GDP termed as the “Holistic Progress Index” or the HPI has been proposed; and an original approach to its quantitative evaluation has been presented. The HPI integrates social, economic, ecological and political aspects of human progress. The rationale of HPI and its evaluation methodology are presented. As proposed, the HPI is based on three major parameters i.e. the Net GDP per capita, Socio-Ecological Progress Index and Socio-Political Progress Index representing Peaceful Development, Sustainability and Human Freedom respectively. The factors involved in the quantitative evaluation of HPI are GDP, military expenditure, health, education, carbon emission, poverty reduction, leisure, population growth, crime and human freedom. Hence the proposed HPI is much more comprehensive than the conventional GDP. Future actions / projects required to utilize the concept of HPI are also proposed and discussed. It is concluded that a pursuit of the growth in HPI (rather than a growth in GDP alone) will lead to Peaceful and Sustainable Development without curtailing Human Freedom.

It is scientifically proved that foreign direct investments (FDI) are one of the life-forces for economic growth. Foreign investors use local labour, capital, and natural resources that are constantly running out and limited. However, global companies that translocate their production process often devastate the nature of the host country. Decline of natural resources and climate changes forces to think about how people could develop country’s economy and social welfare, but at the same time save nature and its resources. Global companies are the main developers of economy and social welfare, but also, they are environment polluters. The value of sustainable development is quite obvious, but there is a lack of research about the relationship between FDI and sustainable development in the literature. The literature separately analyses the problem of sustainable development or FDI impact on economic development. Often, FDI is described by determining the effects, but it does not address the question of expedient foreign capital, which would provide the greatest benefit to the host country. The article analyses the influence of foreign direct investments (FDI) on sustainable development. It develops the concept of sustainable investment. It aims to find out whether the purposively formed foreign direct investment policy can ensure the sustainability of economic development. In this case, FDI can become an instrument for the implementation of sustainable development. This study is about Ireland case. The choice is not coincidental. Since this country applied FDI policy, it was able to transform the economy rapidly, and also it became one of the most developed countries in Europe. The authors of the research chose ten economic, social, and environmental factors that define sustainable growth. The analysis revealed the contact between the indicators of FDI and sustainable growth in different periods of the economic cycle.

Globalization processes are widely discussed in scientific literature. In our research we adopt an approach, according which globalization; especially in form of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) is one of sources of innovative technologies and proxy of sustainable development of industries and countries’ economies. In order to design efficient government policies in the field of FDI attraction, such globalization drivers have to be revealed and their importance evaluated. In presented paper we raise and verify hypotheses about importance of the following globalization drivers: tax burden, institutional performance and market consumptive capacity. Regression analysis tool, we believe, allows revealing if those drivers are equally important for developed and less developed countries (LDC). Economic interpretation and generalization of obtain results, we believe, would allow indicating if consistent patterns can be traced. If so, more efficient government policies, allowing attract innovative technologies, especially to LDC can be suggested.

Presented paper suggests an instrumental approach to soft security and aims to reveal capacity of soft security instruments in terms of contribution to both security and sustainable development in the region which is addressed by Eastern Dimension of European Neighbourhood Policy and which includes Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Russian Federation (which is neither part of EaP nor among 16 EU partners addressed by the European Neighbourhood Policy) is also included in the overview as an important factor of influence in respect of regional security and relations between EaP states and EU. Referring to the main ideas of researchers and policy makers using different approaches to soft security as a phenomenon, the authors of the paper define soft security instruments as purposely organised social practices which rely mainly on sharing, congruence and development of values and competences of initiators and participants of security governance. Focus on the effectiveness of sharing, congruence and development of values and competences of initiators and participants of the EU policies and related joint projects as well as relevant combinations of soft instruments with economic and normative hard means is seen as a possibility to gradually increase level of regional security and transfer elements leading to sustainable development in this region.

The global economy is facing a complex and outstanding challenge: the economic and financial crisis. The digital revolution represents the pillar for a competitive and sustainable global economy and Information and Communication Technologies can become a crucial factor for the economic recovery. The paper aims to highlight the significant contribution of Information and Communication Technologies to the development of sustainable knowledge economy. The paper achieves an analysis of ICT sector in the EU Member States. The comparative study is analyzing the correlation between the networked readiness, global competitiveness and ICT sector share in national economies in the EU27. The current paper also addresses main issues regarding digital marketing.

The issue of competitive advantage is the actual topic in times of globalization and the global crisis. The existence of a competitive advantage in the territory affects significantly its development and success at the territory market. Research of the competitive advantage due to the nature of the territory as a product requires the multidisciplinary approach. While at the corporate and national level, the issue of competitive advantage is given considerable attention, at the regional level it has been not completely researched yet. The aim of the paper is to process the methodology of use and building competitive advantage at the regional level based on the definition of basic terms in the research area. The basic sources of the research are the secondary research of scientific and professional literary resources, the primary research realised by Delphi method among experts from different countries and a conducted primary research by the method of structured interviews with representatives of regional authorities, which aimed to identify the nature of competitive advantage and methods, how to use it in ensuring sustainable development of the region.

The article highlights the importance of the development of the society, as well as the measurement of this development, in the context of security, sustainability and competitiveness and goes much further by guiding to further research focus on the introduced new conception of “Secure and sustainable competitiveness” in the context of globalisation. The definition of “Sustainable competitiveness” was broadened by including new aspect of security. The development of the society was introduced as common output of the globalization which goes hand-in-hand with competitiveness, sustainability and security. The interrelation of certain facets between security, competitiveness and sustainability lead to the proposal to create the new index of “Secure and sustainable competitiveness” with possibility to evaluate the progress by looking back and provide prospects by looking forward. The research findings are in line with policy context and the development of the new index of “Secure and sustainable competitiveness” could be an important research contribution to the European Union Strategy Europe 2020 for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth (2010).

The internationalization practice of the financial institutions has been intensively studied since the 1960s. Due to the increase in international capital flows, foreign direct investments and international trade at that time active development of international or cross-border banking began. At the moment the world is undergoing a very complex process with a high uncertainty in the global banking and financial markets. This article focuses on the banking sector development and some aspects of management of commercial banks in Lithuania and other two Baltic countries. The main subject of the paper is to comparatively analyze the inwards and outwards development in the international banking. The main stress is oriented to aggregated credit enlargements in the Baltic States during the period of the first decade in the 21st century. Commercial banks during the last global economic crisis have been looking for a possible optimization of activities and consequent changes in their networks could be an option for its development assessment. However, the priority could be to identify the cross-border international credit expansion in the Baltic countries. On the other hand, these activities are relied to the countries’ macroeconomic indicators and mainly to the accumulated money supply. There is a scientific self-determination described in this paper in line with the analysis identifying the particular Baltic countries in the dynamics of accumulated deposits and credits of international banks. Subsequently it increased the growth of money supply. Nowadays banks are required to make sensible strategic decisions in order to keep sustainable banking businesses in the future. However, influences of the financial institutions to the global economical recession affect international banks creating negative feedback to their previous problems.