Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

Contemporary studies show that military power depends not only on manpower, weapons, or resources, but in many cases, success on the battlefield is determined by the potential of human capital, including knowledge, skills, competences, and other capacities [1; 2]. Using a cost-based approach, the author focuses on the input side assessing military human capital potential in the context of defence expenditure – economic development nexus in the Baltic countries, such as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The investigation covers the period between 2004 and 2020. Defence expenditure on personnel has been used as a proxy for military human capital potential, and real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita as a proxy for economic development. Research is carried out using econometric methods, including Spearman’s correlation analysis and Automatic Linear Modelling (ALM). The research results reveal that investments in military personnel have significant and positive impact on economic development in the Baltic states. Defence expenditure on personnel explains 63.7 percent of variation in real GDP per capita in Lithuania, 71.3 percent in Latvia, and 63.4 percent in Estonia. The author hopes that the findings of the investigation will extend the scope of research across the Baltic States and will be useful for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 8, economic g rowth).

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.