Slovakia

Large oil field, steel production capacity, or number of tractors produced do not make the company rich. The company grows rich thanks to skilled people in the right place, their excellent skills and ability to adapt to change. As Julian Simon used to say, the ultimate source of wealth is man.

The next five years will be crucial. Public finances should come out of huge deficits, and the lesson from the previous crisis is clear. Tax increases will never be temporary. Pulling the tax brake can serve as an additional \"austerity\" argument in the discussion on lowering the deficit.

Recent evaluation by Slovak security apparatus pointed at the risk posed by Chinese entities trying to gain access to certain crucial sectors in Slovakia. When looking at countries such as Czechia, the UK, or Australia, it is clearly visible that universities are a point of interest for Chinese entities.

When we talk about wages in Slovakia, we refer to gross wage. From an economic point of view, however, it is a fictitious value created by accountants. It represents an arbitrarily set point between the two key values: net wage and labor costs.

The Slovak agricultural sector suffers from several problems that hinder the competitiveness of farmers: complicated land ownership, due to which (young) farmers cannot access fields, an unpredictable business environment and bureaucracy and, last but not least, lack of investment in capital equipment.

The Slovak education system has a number of problems but the generally low teacher salary is not one of them. Those who claim the opposite refer to an international comparison: the share of teachers\' wages in wages of university-educated people.

Singapore ranked first in the 2020 edition of the Smart Cities Index, which aims to assess cities in terms of citizens\' needs. Bratislava ranked 76th out of 109 cities with a year-on-year improvement of 8 places.

Refugee policy has gained momentum. In the run-up to the EU summit, the EU Commission wants to accommodate the representatives of the Central European countries of the Visegrad Group (V4): “Flexible solidarity” is the motto.

After a successful first run in 2019, the INESS Institute published the 2020 international healthcare ranking Health for Money. The rankings follow 23 various indicators including life expectancy, maternal mortality, the consumption of antibiotics, among others.

Let’s look at the data – the results of this year’s Economics Olympiad organized by INESS, with over 6,500 high school students involved. We introduce 10 key findings concerning economic skills of the youth in Slovakia.