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he topic of biobanking has been anchoring in the world and Europe as well. The biobanking field today is characterised by heterogeneous entities that could be classified according to many different categories. This article aims to outline the process of the gradual embedding of the field of biobanking in the European Union (EU) from the point of view of the number of high-quality international research projects related to biobanking or biobanks as such. To identify these research projects, data from the European Commission's (EC's) database on research and innovation projects financed from Framework Programmes (FPs) of the European Union and the Horizon programme were used. It was found that the number of research and innovation projects in which biobanks played an important role more than doubled between 1994 and 2021. The highest increase in the number of biobank-related research and innovation projects occurred between 2002 – 2006 and 2007 – 2013. Several leading countries, in terms of the number of biobank related research projects, emerged during the whole period. The main actors were all countries of western Europe, characterised mostly by above-average performance in indicators such as GDP per capita, Human Development Index (HDI) or Euro Health Consumer Index (EHCI).

National (global) competitiveness became the central issue during the global crisis. Using the values of the three main subdimensions of the Global Competitiveness Index, we propose alternative DEA-based competitiveness indicators. In our approach, the index is nested in the more general measure of the competitiveness-given-performance indicator. We find that globally competitive European countries do not transform competitiveness into income per capita efficiently. Decomposition of the scores suggests that most of the relative inefficiency concentrates in innovation activity. The results proved robust against the CCR model used in previous research as well as principal component analysis.

There is no way to adequately evaluate the economic development of the V4 countries over recent decades without taking into account the role played in it by foreign direct investment (FDI). Albeit the exact gains obtained from FDI are difficult to measure, their benefitial developmental impact has been evidenced by both the ensuing accelerated structural adaptation and higher levels of technological performance achieved across the V4 countries. FDI has ameliorated the areas of total factor productivity growth and export performance, rendering as well the market environment of the economies observed much more regular. FDI as a vehicle of acceleration of economic growth has contributed to the narrowing of the performance gap between the V4 grouping and the "old" EU member states. The first part of the article is, therefore, focused on the creation of conditions making for FDI inflow to the V4 countries. At the beginning of the economic transition, the FDI inflow to the V4 economies was predominantly dependent on their ability to secure favourable business environment and conditions required for the free movement of international capital.The second part of the paper seeks to compare FDI inflows to the V4 countries during the pre- and post-crisis periods. The upward impact of FDI stock on the economic growth throughout the V4 countries is then estimated by means of a growth accounting method. Lastly, we address the relationship between the technological level and absorptive capacity of the economies under scrutiny, with an eye to the potential impact of FDI on innovation-related performance growth.

Regional disparities resulting, above all, from lasting disproportional location of industrial capacities, have shaped Slovakia’s development in recent years. The goal of the chapter is to map regional employment differentiation in the SR, according to high-tech and low-tech manufacturing sectors. To achieve this we worked with recent regional statistical data. We concentrated on this question: Does there exist a substantial relationship between location of high-tech manufacturing and employment growth in selected regions. According to our survey, the high-tech sector did not prove to have strong impact on total employment. However, considering the changing structure of manufacturing in the future, it will represent one of the most decisive issues concerning competitive growth.