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Present period of globalization, fast economic development and world economic crisis is accompanied with a lot of changes in labour market. Increasing number of people without job and income has negative impacts on the whole economy, creates social tension and endangers public finances. One of the potential and perspective solutions is a support of the flexibility of labour, which eventuates in a more flexible labour market and an increased mobility of labour force. It allows firms to adjust employment to the changed production conditions during the economic recession and work force to widen employment possibilities. Flexicurity characterizes the whole Danish labour market. Its main contribution is, that security and flexibility do not oppose. The core of the Danish system of flexicurity is a flexible labour market with active policy of labour and education policy accompanied with a social security. Several measures in this area were adopted also in Slovakia, what should support labour mobility and flexibility of labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign trade is one of the ways in which the national economy of the country is involved into the international division of labor with other countries. The extent of the participation of countries in international trade depends on the variety economic, political, natural, technical or other conditions. Due to the relatively small internal market and lack of sufficient energy and raw materials is the Slovak economy very open in the long term, what created the conditions for a highly positive development. In the context of the economy's orientation on luxury goods with a high elasticity of demand, however, a risk of negative external affects aroused, influencing export performance as well. The degree of openness of the economy has reached a level of 190 % in 2013 and, on the basis of the assumptions of the IMF, forecasts for 2014 and 2015 are that its value should be increased still further - the expected rate of openness is 192% for the year 2015. As a result of the global economic crisis, the disadvantages of such a high openness of the economy began to show. Slovak republic has got namely in a case of a favorable world development huge growth potential, however, the negative development in the external environment causing the decrease of the foreign demand negatively influence the economy's performance. The paper is focused on the macroeconomic analyses of the international trade of Slovakia in the various aspects. It compares the Slovak economy's openness rate with the openness of the V4 countries and other EU countries and explains the development of the openness from the year 1993 until present, when SR takes the 4th place in rankings. Slovakia's position was slightly weakened by the economic crisis. From the territorial point of view, the foreign trade of the Slovak republic focuses mainly on the EU countries, while exports to those countries represent approximately 90% and imports 65%. The commodity structure of foreign trade is largely concentrated in a few industries (manufacture of motor vehicles, manufacture of computer, electronic and optical products), which also corresponds to a high proportion of large firms in the foreign trade. The Slovak economy is import intensive, and as a result Slovakia is still dependent on the supply of strategic raw materials, mainly oil and natural gas from Russia. This dependence in relation to the development of unstable prices on world markets, leads to the negative development of the balance of trade. Foreign trade policy of the Slovak republic is conditioned by the membership in the EU and Eurozone, what determines also the Slovak proexport policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational corporations grew up rapidly in 90s years of 20th century. They have acquired very strong position in world economy and started to play an important role in influencing particular national economies. Transnational corporations affect host economies through two channels - by foreign direct investment and international trade. Objective of the paper is to estimate the importance of foreign direct investment inflow, export and import on labour productivity and unemployment (two most common factors in analysis of transnational corporations) that have further direct impact on economic growth. In this view, paper's effort is to examine these most proclaim advantages of corporations entrepreneurship in host economies. As the result shows, there is positive impact of foreign direct investment on labour productivity. Also, it indicates the negative sign of coefficient for foreign investment in case of unemployment. That implies that higher volume of investment decreases the unemployment what is in fact a positive for economy. Export is positive and statistically significant only in influencing labour productivity, but it has no effect on unemployment. Also, there is no clear impact of import on labour productivity and unemployment.2 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of word economy in 90's years of 20th century was facilitated by the development of international trade and its liberalization. Trade, but also foreign investment has stimulated economic growth, particularly, in developing and transition countries. Thus, trade policy began to be very effective instruments in affecting growth of economies. It is liberalization of trade that has shift Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) from transition economies to the group of most developed world countries. As known, production of these countries is oriented mostly on export and their output significantly depends on demand on foreign markets. This situation yields two contrary effects. Firstly, such orientation allows achieving high rates of economic growth and strengthens the position of countries in world economy. On the other hand, countries economic performance is volatile on demand on foreign markets that counties cannot determine and on development of world, respectively European economy with its boosts and recessions. Orientation on international trade and increase in its volume creates conditions for growth of productivity that is important factor of stimulation economic growth. Thus, objective of paper is to estimate the effect of openness of economy on productivity in Visegrad countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]